Your Heart for My White Fences
by ghar
Summary: At first, Derek was the one night stand that he could not pry himself away from. Before he knew it, Derek was the married man Stiles had fallen in love with. Then, Stiles was the little lamb being tossed into a pit of wolves, helpless and alone. There was not much he could do, no, not much at all. Dark AU.
1. Chapter 1

Basically a spin-off of the [8] & [9] chapters of _Songs About Stiles_. It starts with a one-night stand that escalates into something more. If you have read SaS, yeah, that _thing _is still going to happen, just a little later. Thanks again to my beta for spell-checking, sound boarding, and inspiring me as usual.

Shout out to of !

**Your Heart For My White Fences [1/10]**

Things had deteriorated.

Stiles convinced himself that whatever feelings he had were fading, fleeting, bound to be gone in a week's—at most a month's—time. Sex with Derek had gradually become habit. Two to three times a week they would meet at the same string of hotels around the city, strip off their clothes, and fuck until Derek exited stage left, without so much more than a _till next time, Stiles_.

In the beginning, the goodbyes had been easy. When they were strangers adapting to each other's bodies, Stiles was unmoved by Derek's aloofness after sex. Derek was attentive, caring, doting, and a touch sadistic in the way he made love. Stiles had his share of experience, not a lot, but enough to know that Derek was the kind of lover he would only see once. All that tenderness disappeared the second Derek decided they were done fucking, and he began to redress. He stopped making eye-contact. He would have his back turned in the opposite direction.

Derek left a bad taste in Stiles's mouth. He felt used. It was a feeling he could ignore, for awhile, but eventually the feelings began to mount on each other. Stiles was something Derek wanted then threw away, wanted again, and threw away again.

The visits became more steady, part of the flow of life, each time more regular than the last, until each broken engagement felt like a betrayal to the point where Stiles began moving his life around his casual agreement with the Derek, the Derek he had known for three months, the Derek he had sucked, fucked, and pined for, the Derek he only knew as Derek. The exchange of whole names was a breach of their contract, their relationship, the very basis of who they were as a pair.

He was slowly but surely crumbling.

The pieces were falling on the people he loved.

His father came to visit one Saturday; he made the near three hour drive up from Beacon to see Stiles on a whim. They managed to spend half the day together until Derek, with his usual out of the blue text, asked Stiles to meet him. At that point, the longing, the ache, the slow decay the relationship had weighed, made the decision for Stiles. Stiles left his father with his roommates. He told his father to wait, to wait for him, he would only be an hour at most. Sheriff Stilinski, not one to pressure Stiles especially now that his son was grown and in college, let him do what he wanted, even if what he wanted he told no one about. This was eight in the evening. Stiles returned three hours after midnight.

It was a pattern he kept falling into.

His friends and his family began to see him as avoidant, secretive, and fundamentally _changed_. Stiles left parties on a moment's notice, dinners, even classes at Derek's suggestion. He slept less, ate less, drank more, smoked more. It was the sort of spiral people noticed and ignored until there came a point when Stiles had become someone new entirely. They pressured him with questions, about drugs, alcohol, issues, depression, something that would help explain his behavior. Stiles refused to answer. He did not want to be _explained_. He wanted to lie to himself. He wanted to live in the fantasy that what he and Derek had, whatever it was, was something he had some semblance of control over.

The logic behind his behavior was incredibly—foolishly—simple.

If he lost himself in the fantasy, then he could keep going, keep lying, keep dragging himself through day by day, night by night, week by week, estranged relationship by estranged relationship. Then, when the dust cleared and he had finally managed to disintegrate, he could be finally free of all the mess, the disasters, the disappointments, the burning bridges, the people he had abandoned. The suicidal behavior typical of the human heart pushed to _extremis, _the subtle destroying power of what was called love, always began with delusion. The initial push from reality, that foray into the fantastic possibility, all hopefulness of love, contained in it the possibilities of self-destruction, of self-realization, of selflessness.

_I can't have feelings for Derek. This is just sex._

The limitless danger to love, the stars must shake at the thought. The question is, with laughter or with fear.

When he was a child, there was a window in his mother's hospital room. He would stare through those panes to see the sky, whether it was grey or blue or any color between, during the days his mother was too sick to speak. Looking out of windows during uncomfortable situations, during the silences he longed to break, was a long-standing remnant of the time when he thought the world was collapsing in on him. The way Derek was fucking him that afternoon—not looking into his eyes, his hands touching him but not _feeling _him—forced Stiles to look at the clouds pass by their hotel window, drifting away, moving at the pace of the window and the gentle rotation of the earth.

Derek bucked his hips. It was a sudden move, a painful one, that brought the clouds falling down. He jammed into Stiles, into the side of his inner-walls, and he stared. Stiles winced, hard, and curled his body around Derek, trying to drive the pain out through his fingertips and toes.

"You're distracted." Derek said. "I don't want to be doing this when you're looking out there."

"You're not looking at me either." Stiles said.

Derek held Stiles down, and pulled out. He slid next to him, cradling his arms around Stiles's torso, face nuzzled against his neck.

"We don't have to do that today." He said. "I'm tired."

Stiles grabbed Derek's hand. He found place for his fingers between Derek's fingers. He found a place for himself. There was a peace to the moment, to the heat they shared, to the way Derek's breath felt on Stiles's skin. He wanted to fade into this and think and understand, but he had always been weak to warm things. He had always been weak to being wanted. He wanted to sleep. He finally felt like he could, because Derek was next to him, clouds in the sky drifting at their own pace, finding their own place, a place for each other.

"Derek." Stiles said.

"Yes?" Derek said.

"Thanks holding me." He had hesitated, at first, when the words came to him, but he felt like he needed Derek to know how grateful he was. He wanted Derek to know what he wanted. Finally.

"Say the word. I'll hold you again."

The words were like a lullaby. His arms, a blanket. There was a sense of comfort, of safety, of being in a place where no one could hurt him, no one could possibly break him again. How long had it been since he felt like this? He lingered on the rasp of Derek's voice, the rhythm of his breath, taking his time to remember the moment and intricacies. He fell asleep.

When he woke, he was cold and alone.

It was eleven thirty at night when Stiles managed to return to the apartment he shared with Scott and Jackson. The door was open. They had been expecting him to come home; he always came home with the same face on, as if he been lost or as if he had lost something. Perhaps the most terrifying and paralyzing aspect of a disease was the predictability of the symptoms: Scott saw Stiles walk in, eyes blank and his shoulder slack, and he knew that he had just come from that _thing _that made him so freakishly miserable. The husk standing in the doorway was barely Stiles at all.

The _thing_ was Derek. Stiles never said a word to Scott, to Jackson, to anyone about him. Addicts kept their drugs secrets, especially the ones who knew there were people willing to force them clean. Scott, Allison, his Father, maybe even Jackson and Lydia, would tell him to stop.

That was the one thing Stiles did not want to do.

"Stiles." Scott pushed himself off the couch.

"Scott, Jackson. You watching _Teen Mom_ again?" Stiles said.

Jackson laughed. This had happened before, too many times, for him to even pretend to be interested. Scott would ask Stiles where he had gone; Stiles would say he was studying. Scott would ask where, and Stiles would say somewhere. It would continue on and on until Scott started yelling and Stiles would retreat into their room, cover his head with his pillow, and start tuning everyone and everything out.

"We need to talk." The scene began as usual.

Stiles shook his head and said, "Not right now, Scott. I'm not in the mood. I've...got this terrible headache and I just want to get some sleep, alright?"

Scott pressed on. He closed in on Stiles, cornered him in the space between the bedroom and the kitchen. He and his pointed chin were determined to get an answer this time.

"Are you...on drugs? Or something, Stiles. We need to know. We need to know because you're fucking _killing _yourself over something, just something, we've been best-friends for how long and I still...I still don't know what is making you so miserable because I guess you don't trust me enough to tell me."

Jackson had never heard Scott play this card before, the 'I don't think you trust me' card. He turned around to see the look on Stiles's face, to see how Stilinski was going to lie himself out of this one.

"It's...I'm fucking around with this guy, and...it's going absolutely nowhere and I don't know how long I can last until I just fall apart." The way he said it, the way he leaned against the kitchen counter, the way Stiles let his head hang loose behind his shoulders, made Jackson shudder.

Stiles sat on his bed, legs square on the ground, face hunched forward, hands at his temples, trying to process the fact that he had broken rule three of his agreement with Derek: _only we know_. There had been three rules. Only three. 1) _we only see each other behind closed doors. _2) _First names only. _3) _No one knows except us_. He had broken one and he knew—he did not even know how Derek would have found out but he knew Derek would—that breaking one of the rules had its consequences.

Scott opened the door. They shared a room. Jackson took the other room in the apartment, seeing as though he paid for half the rent himself anyway and he needed the space. He handed Stiles a bottle of beer, cold, straight from the _Safeway_ down the street. He had made Jackson run down and get them something to drink to take the edge off.

"Hey, so. What's his name?" Scott asked.

"I can't say..." Stiles said.

Scott popped the cap off his bottle and started to drink. He looked at Stiles and said, "seriously? I just need his first name. You know. So I don't have to say _that guy_, or _the guy you're sleeping with_, or _the guy whose ruining your life_."

"It's...Derek. That's all I know. Practically all I know. We only ever have sex, and I know, what kind of crazy falls in love over a fuck buddy, but...Derek says things...with sex, I feel like he does at least."

Once Derek traced his fingers over every _inch _of Stiles body, taking his time, observing and learning. He had a policy on orgasm. He did not consider it an orgasm if there was no direct eye contact. He wanted, no, he craved, the look on Stiles's face as he came. That was the one thing Derek asked for in bed. To see Stiles's face. Everything else he just took as if he already owned it.

"You've had buddies before right? I mean..." Scott struggled for the words. "How long has this thing lasted?"

"Probably. Six months? Seven in six days."

"You track your anniversary?"

"Come on Scott..." Stiles said. "I mean. Lydia was one thing. But Derek is like...the first touch of rain on my skin after a long summer, some Nicholas Sparks shit like that. I feel like. I think about him all the time. I want to be with him. I can't say no. I don't want to, even if I know-" Scott interrupted Stiles.

"You're disappointing everyone else in the process? Yeah. I get it. I'm sort of glad it's a guy, not drugs or like a fight club." Scott said. That was the brilliant thing about having Scott as a best-friend. No judgments, alright, some judgments, but he had a joke when Stiles counted on them most.

"Okay, second confession of the night. I'm in this club, and the first rule is: you don't ever talk about it."

Scott tapped him in back of the head with his bottle. Stiles took a hit of his beer. He grinned. He was getting that peaceful feeling again, the lightness in his chest, and the idea floated in, the idea that he may not need Derek after all, as much as he thought he did, at least.

_About leaving. I had something to take care of. -D_

The relapse came sooner than expected. Stiles was in class when he received the text, again out of the blue, and he didn't bother to answer it right away. Two days had passed since that afternoon. Their usual purview was to forget about any awkward incidents. At this point, Stiles wanted off the table. Stiles had been prepared for forgetting. Stiles had been more than prepared for the usual Derek.

The text was far from the norm.

He had been in college for nearly two years and he was driving himself insane over text messages like he had never left high school. Progress. Great progress. Derek had managed to turn him back into a seventeen year old.

Stiles tucked the cellphone away. He needed to focus, jot down notes, try and make it through class before wasting another day thinking about _fight club_. His sweet release, the activity that made him feel alive, that hurt him, that drove him to new extremes, Derek was fight club, hell, Derek might not even be real, all things considered. No one other than Stiles had ever seen him, heard from him.

Plot twist: he had fallen in love with his hallucination. Damn, what a hot, kinky hallucination. Why was his hallucination so kinky? Stiles bit down on his lip to try and focus in on the lecture.

Rumble in his pocket. Another text. Stiles read:

_What time do you finish classes today? -D_

He would have to sweet talk the pikachu-ears girl sitting two rows away from him again for the class notes, because Stiles needed to answer Derek, if this was even Derek.

_Derek, I know who you are. No need to end every text with -D. I'll be done in about 15._

He lied. He had another class after this one, in about an hour, but he was going to scream in his pillow for a good while. He waited, tapping his foot against the hardwood floor, trying to float in the lecture through one ear and trying to recognize the sound of a phone's vibration.

_ That's just messaging etiquette. But I suppose we don't have to be so formal with each other. I want to see you soon. As soon as possible. I can pick you up, so please, if you can today. It won't be long._

As soon as possible. There were clichés that Stiles had heard his whole life, one of them being to the tune of 'hearts skipping beats' but reading this text from Derek literally made his heart miss a regular beat, which was a lot more dangerous than romantic comedies made the phenomenon out to be.

_Ah. I'm not used to being so formal about this with you. I mean...it won't be long? That's not very tempting, Derek. I'm used to quality._

_ Yes or no._

_ Yes. So...this is the point where I give you my address and you pick me up in your car? That's breaking a few rules._

_ We can talk about our rules today. We can talk about a lot things, if you want, just..._

_ Pick me up in thirty. It takes me awhile to walk back home from campus. I live on 1910 Oxford. I'll just wait out on the street. Easy right?_

_ Right._

Stiles smiled. Progress.

Waiting for Derek.

He had been waiting for Derek all this time and now, Derek was finally meeting him halfway. He had finally met Stiles halfway. All he needed to do was wait a little more. Finally. Finally. There was the peaceful feeling, the infernal lightness emerging from the deepest cavity in his chest, bringing him places he never thought he could go. Stiles had waited. Now, Derek was coming. Here. To his apartment building.

Every car held in it the possibility of being Derek's.

Every second held in it the possibility of being _the _second.

When was the last time he had been this excited? There was the ninth birthday party when his dad let him drink all the Mountain Dew he wanted, which inevitably ended with Stiles running naked through the better part of their neighborhood. What was he going to tell Scott now? _Hey, remember when I was depressed the other day? Turned out Derek was actually the one after all and true love exists! _Scott would probably hug him and say _I believed in it the whole time _even if he thought Derek was full of bullshit.

He waited.

And waited. Hoped. He sat on the curb.

Derek never came.


	2. Chapter 2

This was almost a rewrite of the scene from Songs About Stiles, so sorry if they sound similar. Also there's sort of a POV change in the middle of the smutty scene. I have no experience on the Stiles end... It's weird but as I get engrossed in the scene myself I start writing as Derek.

Casual sex is one of the themes being explored here; so the sex scenes are dropped in without a lot of build-up. That's opposed to the other trope where the romantic build leads to the sex. I don't know. Maybe I'm making up excuses to write a lot of porn and still remain...somewhat legitimate.

**Your Heart for My White Fences [2/10]**

He wanted to whittle it down to a single moment in time when he could swear to himself that Derek Hale, stoic and sexy Derek Hale, became the first person Stiles loved. It was a tall order, because relationships were lengthy, even their half-year of one-night stands, and Stiles had not loved him in the beginning. No, he had been sane at one point, and then suddenly, as if he had been pushed off a cliff, Stiles was free falling into the bottomless abyss of unrequited love. Whatever Derek wanted to call their arrangement and his lack of emotional _anything_. Stiles wanted to find that point in time when he fell in love, and he wanted to erase the memory, _Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind _that memory, so he could have his first love back, because Derek had not stood him up, he had made him believe that things were changing between them, that they had a chance at making it. Being built up then knocked down, Stiles never wanted to feel that again.

He brewed himself a pot of coffee, bought a package of Oreos, and downed more than the recommended dosage of Adderall. Scott went home to Beacon Hills for his mother's birthday, and Jackson was spending the weekend with which ever dumbass fell for his steely blue eyes. Stiles officially had the apartment to himself. He was going to spend time in deep introspection. He would find out where he had gone wrong with Derek. He knew he had fallen in love with a brick wall; he just needed to know _when _and if there were any signs, so he could never make the Derek mistake again. It had been three days since he last talked to Derek.

Keyword: last, because Stiles was done.

He needed to organize his Oreos. Whether it was because of his latent OCD being unleashed by his medication or his unwillingness to take out his emotional garbage, Stiles felt like he needed to create a perfect fort of cookies. He _needed _to because the cookies, well, the cookies demanded to be made into a fort. They said nothing, signified nothing, and actually really wanted nothing from him; his relationship to the Oreos was pretty _good_ actually, considering how much cream he was getting out for relatively nothing. Stiles wanted to make more out of the cookies because he was a delusional young adult with no experience with this particular kind of Oreos. Mint Oreos. He would try and build a perfect fort anyway, even though the cookies were not meant only to be eaten. He piled them, he stacked them, and he tried his best to keep up them. Eventually, the Oreos caved in and rolled off, leaving Stiles behind for good.

"Fucking Oreos." Stiles said. He swore he would get Chips Ahoy next time. Those were honest cookies. Serious cookies. Cookies who would never a leave a guy just because he wanted to build a cookie fort. He would give Chips Ahoy his all, too, start doing tongue exercises among _other _things so that Chips Ahoy enjoyed Stiles in ways Oreos never could.

Their first time.

Derek had chosen the hotel. They had been chatting for a few hours, scoping each other out; though Derek had done the majority of the scoping trying to see if Stiles was the discreet enough type to play his sort of game. Derek suggested they see each other in person, and next thing Stiles knew, he was being pressed against the wall of a strange room, a stranger's tongue snaking around the back of his earlobe.

"Oh God...whaa..." Stiles said. "This place...so nice...fuck...do that...do that please...guy..."

Hands. He tried to keep track of them, tried to move as they moved, but Derek held him up by the wrists, as if he were trying to say: _it's pointless_. This was his language. Stiles caught on quickly enough to do what he was told, following Derek's lead while simultaneously being toyed with, being explored. He had slept with other guys before. He had good sex before, but sex was never more than sex. With Derek, sex was a message, a means to something else. At least, Stiles had felt that way. Derek unzipped his jeans, and fished out his cock, pulling Stiles's hard member against the hard metal teeth.

"ARGH. What the hell! Der.."

Derek's mouth crushed against Stiles's, his tongue forcibly gaining entrance, shutting him up completely. He could feel Derek thumbing the head of his cock, and it drove him insane. The way he circled around the outer ridge, around the corona with his writing callus, the way he bit down on Stiles's lower lip, the way he used his other hand to run his hand under Stiles's shirt, making trails, taking small spots at what he assumed were important landmarks: the base of Stiles's spine, the slope of his navel, the small pointed ends of his nipples. Stiles was unable to speak. Voice his impending come. He would have asked Derek to stop, but Derek knew what he was doing, driving Stiles so close so early.

Derek broke the kiss, and pumped Stiles's cock, _waiting _to see his face while he shot. Derek craved the face of a guy about to cum, in orgasm; they were vulnerable and they were invincible. They were present and they were absent. Contradictions. Complexity. He wanted to see Stiles's eyes roll back; they did. He wanted to see Stiles bite his own lip; he did. He wanted to him tilt his head, squeeze his eyes a little more, open his mouth as he let out a deep moan; and he did. Good. Derek enjoyed that. His own erection was pressing against Stiles's thigh.

Stiles nearly fell down. His knees were weak. Orgasms did that to him. Derek supported him, hands cupping his ass. Stiles could feel the air on his sensitive cockhead. He winced.

"Shit...shit...are, we? No...I don't even...when I jack off...twice...that's crazy...I'm too sensitive right..." Derek dropped him on the bed. He was wearing his suit. He peeled off his tie. Stiles was quickly learning that he would be doing all the talking here, and Derek would be doing _all _the sexing, which he did not exactly mind, considering how good Derek was at said sexing.

Derek undressed slowly. He had given him time to recover without actually _giving _him any time. Stiles watched and realized he should undress too. He pulled off his clothes, and by the time they were both good and naked, he was hard again. Hard, but still sensitive. Derek hardly cared though, or maybe he did care, but only because he wanted to see Stiles's face when he squeezed him.

"SHIT...it's...still so sore Derek...don't touch it so rough..." Stiles could tell Derek enjoyed it when he reacted to his provocations, because whenever he did, there was a reward at the end.

Derek licked the back of his ear. Stiles felt the familiar wave rush all the way through to his toes, breaking him again. He wanted so bad to prove himself to this man but he did not know how. He felt like he was being pulled back and forth on a string. All the while, Derek kept watching his face, seeing the way he reacted to the touches, the movements, the techniques. He took to teasing him with his cock, rubbing it against Stiles, up his thigh, as the examination continued. Derek wanted Stiles to _beg _to be fucked.

"How...howww big is that thing? Derek?" Derek just continued. No sound. Silence. Silence kept them guessing. Silence kept them playing to his tune and his tune alone. He invaded Stiles's mind. He took control there. He wanted Stiles on edge, on guard, on his toes ready to _squirm_ when Derek wanted him to squirm. He kept teasing. He kept building Stiles up. He wanted. He needed to hear the words. Derek had that quirk about him, especially during the first hook-up.

"Fuck me." Stiles said. He completely flushed. "Do it. I'm aching for you to fuck me and I'm pretty sure that guys don't naturally _ache _down there so you must be some sort of sex wizard turning versatile men into full-time bottoms."

Derek pushed Stiles's legs up. He spread them wide, revealing a very taut hole. He tested the entrance with a single finger; Stiles let him in. He was tight, tighter than Derek expected him to be; he had probably been fucked once or twice, and probably never by anyone Derek's size. He backed up and knelt down. Derek searched his pockets for the tub of lube and the condom he had brought. He had to be careful with the young ones. Especially the ones who were arrogant about their experiences, who had lost their virginity, who been fucked once and thought they could get fucked by anyone or anything.

"Are you allergic to lubricant?" Derek asked. It had been the first thing he said.

"No, I'm not. Are we using some?" Stiles answered.

"A lot. You're still tight." Derek said. "I don't...want mistakes."

Derek slid on the condom, and rubbed a thick layer of lube around his cock. He applied a layer around his finger, then proceeded to spread it around Stiles's hole and his insides, until there was a fine coat lining the area. It would help, certainly, but there would be stretching regardless and stretching _hurt_. Derek used his fingers first. Three. To prep him. There was a difference between his fingers and his actual dick, though, and the moment Derek entered him, Stiles could feel himself being torn apart, being split.

"SHIT. GOD." Stiles said. "THE LUBE DOES..."

Derek lifted a hand and brushed Stiles's cheek. He then proceeded to push in deeper and deeper, for God knows what reason why. The first time Stiles had done this, the guy had fucked him and jacked him off. When Derek hit the spot, that untested spot, Stiles understood why Derek was still going, holy shit; the head of Derek's cock hitting his prostate drove Stiles mad and he bucked his head into the mattress while he made arguably the loudest sound of the night.

"ARGGGGGH." Stiles usually claimed that he preferred to top. He was slowly beginning to change his mind. Derek quickened his pace, ramming into Stiles, driving drop after drop from the drooling tip of Stiles's untouched cock. Derek felt Stiles wrap around him, squeeze against, as pumped; this guy was a natural bottom and he probably never knew it until then. Derek was going to bring him to his second orgasm without even laying a hand on his dick again.

There was something off.

Stiles's face was contorted. He had been biting into a pillow to keep from moaning too loudly. Derek watched Stiles closely enough to know what look he made when he was comfortable and when he was uncomfortable, in pleasure or in pain. His face had all the markings of pain. Derek, driven to self-consciousness, broke his rhythm.

"Are you okay?" He asked.

"Fine." Stiles said. "Fine. I just...Why'd you stop?"

"You looked hurt."

"I mean...I was hurting, not a lot. I could handle it."

"That wasn't a face reserved for a little hurt." Derek said.

"I'm...trying to come with you, this time, alright? I'm close. This...I don't wanna embarrass myself more than I already have." Stiles said. There was shame in his voice. Shame that Derek wanted to blow away.

He held both of Stiles's hands, interlocked their fingers, and continued. Derek let himself go, let himself go free into the flow of his hips as the music of Stiles's groans filled the room.

"Close." He said.

"Close." Why was he giving him clues?

"Closer. Prepare." Stiles nodded. Derek grabbed his cock one more time, and together they pushed and pulled, alternating the movements of muscles like the precise clockwork of a masterwork Swiss timepiece, bit by bit in uncanny cohesion.

"Th—ere." Derek said. He tried to keep his eyes open through his own orgasm, and to his surprise, Stiles was looking right at him, meeting him. They fell on top of each other, rolled next to each other, and synchronized their breaths along with each other; Derek noticed he still had Stiles's hand in his own, and for awhile, he did not care to let go.

After the fifteenth Oreo and third cup of coffee, with the massive boner pressing against the fabric of his basketball shorts, Stiles emerged from his daydream. Stiles neededto jerk off. He could take care of himself in that regard.

He picked himself up and headed for the couch. He was alone, after all. That was a funny problem with roommates. There was no such thing as a safe moment to masturbate in a shared living space. Stiles had to learn that lesson three times. This was the second time. He eased himself onto the couch, and slid his hand down his shorts. He thought of Derek, of the way he made love, the dangerous things he did and the caution he showed. Stiles slid his bottoms down, both his shorts and his boxers. He was halfway through the memory of Derek fucking him raw in front of an open window overlooking San Francisco when Jackson and his friend Isaac Lahey walked through the front door.

"Stilinski...you pitiful..." Jackson said in reaction the sight of his roommate. Stiles looked at them as they stood by the door. Stunned, he tried to pull his boxers and his basketball shorts up.

"JACKSON...and Jackson's new friend. Hey, aren't you Isaac? Year younger than us, Beacon Hills High School. Didn't know you were up here too."

"Yes..." Isaac stuttered. He was different from back then, not the quiet, nervous kid he once was, but not the endless whirlpool of shameless confidence that Jackson was either. Stiles noticed the haze in Jackson's eyes. They had been probably been drinking. Jackson turned to Isaac, as if to suggest something; Isaac, reluctant at first, nodded his head, in agreement. Stiles was worried.

"So, we've decided to you know, hook-up because we are, as you can plainly see, two attractive guys. Problem is: neither of us wants to bottom for the other." Jackson said. "Now, I know from the look of you, you know the stickman act and the general fixation with your ass, you're probably a power-bottom. I'm going to offer you this once in a lifetime opportunity Stilinski..."

Jackson Whittemore, Stiles's douchebag roommate and perhaps the most cynical person on the planet, was asking him to join in a three-way with Isaac Lahey, who was also hot. Two hot guys, neither of them Derek, both of them asking to _fuck _him and both of them having seen him masturbate on the couch.

"If we do this, you tell no one about what I was...doing here." Stiles said. "Scott made me pay for the cleaners the last time, remember?"

"Yeah. He did. Now, shall we?" Jackson said. "Wait, what's wrong with your teeth? They're...blackish."

Isaac looked horrified. He probably thought that the morning after Jackson had taken him home, he would finally have his chance at the lacrosse captain who had ignored him all those years. Stiles rolled his eyes. He felt sorry for him, falling for a guy like that. Derek. Derek and his hands. Derek and his mouth. Derek and the way he moved his hips, in and out.

"I was eating Oreos. Here, let me brush up. You guys can start. Not like I need to warm up anyway." Stiles pointed to the tent he was currently pitching. He walked to the bathroom, grabbed his toothbrush, and dabbed a bit of toothpaste at the end. Everything, everything, returned to that night. What he was about to do, what he did, what he felt, what he was feeling. Stiles was going to come up for air.

The door to Jackson's room was closed by the time Stiles had finished brushing his teeth. He wondered if his invitation had been revoked, so he knocked and said: "am I still in this thing? Cause I kinda brushed my teeth for this."

"YEAH. GET IN HERE." Jackson said. He more or less groaned the words.

Stiles twisted the doorknob and stepped through. The room was completely dark. Suddenly, Stiles felt two sets of hands grab him from either side. Jackson and Isaac, hungry for him, hungry for each other, had sandwiched him between them. He couldn't tell who was who and what limbs were even his, and at one point someone had taken off his shirt. He should have loved this; he was moving on, getting past Derek with guys who were just as hot as Derek, _two _guys at the same freaking time. Stiles felt himself moving at their pace; he knew where to touch because Derek had touched them there.

He was sucking Jackson's earlobe while running his hands all over Isaac's body, applying pressure with the hard of his fingernails, drafting circles in places he knew Isaac would go crazy.

"Fuck...Stilinski...where'd you learn to do that?" Jackson said.

"Derek."

"Who the fuck is Derek?" Isaac said. He dipped down to peel off Jackson's last remaining piece of clothing: his boxers. "Cause holy shit. I want a Derek."

_I want a Derek. _Stiles thought.

He was thinking about Derek. He could not stop thinking about Derek and how he was betraying him by messing around. Stiles pulled away. Why did he need to move on so badly? He could die unhappy. People oversold happiness. People oversold love. Stiles could be miserable. He could.

"Wha? Stiles." Jackson said. "We were getting to the good part."

"Just get fucked, Isaac. You like him enough, right? Just let him fuck you." He said, coldly. Stiles left before Isaac gave him an answer. He had his own. He found his cellphone on the kitchen counter where he had left it. Stiles a wrote message. Sent it.

_You make me crazy. -S_

He did not expect a reply. When one came, he laughed.

_You make me insane. -D_

Stiles wrote back.

_If you're done with me, I'm not gonna get over you for a long time._

He waited. He waited. Derek returned the text in twenty minutes.

_Come down. I'm on the street._


	3. Chapter 3

A big word (or phrase? statement?) of gratitude to everyone who reads this fic. It's such an honor to be read. Thanks to my beta (amazing woman). This chapter is heavy. The story starts to really pick up. Anyway comments, reviews, questions, and criticisms are _always _appreciated.

**Your Heart for My White Fences [3/10]**

Stiles pushed open the door to his apartment and slid his cellphone into the linty recess of his left pocket. He was still wearing his basketball shorts. They were sticky, maybe a little musky, from messing around with Jackson and Isaac. He considered taking them off and wearing jeans instead, but he was still unsure, still in doubt, still unable to believe that Derek would be waiting for him. Fuck. He breathed. Shit. He cracked his neck. Damn it, Derek. He bit his lip.

He was crossing the longest length of steps he would ever cross because he was a kid again walking across the hallway of his house.

It was Mother's Day and his mom was home for the first time in weeks. She was feeling better, and Stiles had gotten up early to make her breakfast. Dad cooked the breakfast, made her favorites, brewed her coffee. He fixed the plates and he wrote the card. He felt it then too. The beat in his heart. The bare strength in his legs. He was imagining her face when she saw him, when he said _Happy Mother's Day_, and when he handed her the tray and the card; when she finally gave in and let him eat her pancakes because she knew Stiles loved pancakes in the morning, he had imagined it all in his head. He was anticipating the moment.

Dad opened the door to her room. Then he saw her face. She was sleeping, so soundly. She had not slept like that in so long. Dad had this pained look on his face, because he knew he had to let Stiles down. He told him to leave the tray on the dresser, to let his mom sleep for awhile, and to come back later. Stiles wondered what the feeling in his chest was. He felt like he was being spooned out from the inside like a piece of grapefruit. Served cut. Watermelon. He had gone back to his room. Cried a little. Maybe Dad cried too. He didn't see. He had fallen asleep.

He was on the third story of his apartment building when he returned to the present. The feeling that hit him was emptiness. Disappointment. Heartache. People experienced it when their expectations were broken, when the people they loved did not reciprocate, for whatever reason. Stiles's mom loved him, but she could not love him like he wanted. For all the romantics say about the beauty and power of pure love, the emotional love, honest love, what was the point if you only knew you were loved. Stiles needed to experience it. The sensation of love.

He was nearing the next row of stairs. Derek was entirely sensation. No emotion. Contact. Maybe he was being too picky. Maybe people needed both. What was wrong with people then, needing two things to be happy; Stiles could only ever manage one. He twisted back the thought. At one point in time his mother loved him both ways. His father loved him and he proved he loved him. He put up with his bullshit, with his one-night stands, with his impromptu visits. He wondered if Derek had ever been loved that way, in both ways. Maybe he never learned the other kind, the kind that you had to know, to talk about, to understand, that didn't involve contact.

The streetlights and the shadows wove across the streets. Against the cold air, the nightwalkers moved, a human in one moment, a shade the next. Derek was neither and both; back leaning against his car, caught in the light and trapped in the dark, he stood with his hands in his coat pockets, eyes closed, head tilted slightly forward. Stiles, winded, stepped out into the pavement. A lamp hung above the doorway; it was a dull yellow, but it was light.

Derek turned his head, opened his eyes, split his lips intent on having the first word, but Stiles—dejected and unsatisfied Stiles—spoke first.

"You finally showed up." He said. "I can..."

Derek backed away. Stiles, hands at his sides, mouth open, eyes burning red, waited. He saw Derek in his coat, his suit, in his shined leather shoes, with his watch, with his Italian car underneath the streetlight, looking back at him, wide-eyed and sorry. He was seeing him as he was, in the full, an older man with a career bigger than anything Stiles would ever have, in all likelihood. Then he saw it. It was so fucking simple. One of the simplest objects, simple design, nothing ornate, nothing Stiles had never seen before. But the worst things in life are the most ordinary, the most simple, the most domestic. They invade the deep spaces. They rip you from the inside. They leave you rotten, empty, hollow.

A gold band. Around his ring finger. What was he thinking. It was a ring.

"Der..." Stiles muttered. "Tha...That ring."

He held it up to the light.

"It's as you think."

Trembling.

"Is it?"

Green eyes calm and a long sigh.

"Yes. Five years." Derek said. "She doesn't know about you."

Paralysis.

"Fu..."

He had forgotten what they felt like. The shortness of breath so extreme he lost the ability to stand. The way his brain kept screaming for air. Sanctuary. Something to make the thought go away. The ring. Derek. What. It had to be a joke. It had to be an elaborate prank and he had to be dreaming and he need to wake up and he needed to breath because he was about to lose himself in this dark, dark box. Where was Derek? Those strong hands around him. Shit. Married hands. He was Monica Lewinsky. He was Angelina Jolie. He was all the mistresses in the world, and those married hands sent shivers down his spine like they always had.

"GET OFF ME." Stiles said. "Derek, you're married. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THIS IS A JOKE. HAHA"

Derek was holding him. Calming him. Giving him the air back. Why was it like this? Why was he so gentle. Stiles felt himself sink into Derek's body as they sat together on the sidewalk, underneath the lamplight, in the cold. He was sobbing. Derek was brushing the tears away, bit by bit, but he had no more words to say, no more to provide, no more to give. He could only give Stiles this.

"I tried. So hard. To not fall in love with you, Stiles." Derek said. "I thought we could keep going on forever like we did, but that was impossible with you. You made it impossible for me to not fall in love with you. Just...I don't know. I can't believe it either because we had _left _this at sex, but I guess we were fighting something, a possibility we weren't supposed to fight."

Derek slid his thumb across Stiles's cheek.

"_There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all._" Derek finished the lines. They seemed infinite. Echoing to each and every corner of the mind, they rang and they resonated. The streetlamps in the parallel street. Light on, light off. Not now, now, yet will, yet come, not now, the readiness, Stiles shuffled through the words as slowly and as delicately as he shuffled through Derek's fingers, trying to tease their meaning.

"Did you just quote Hamlet to me?" His voice was weak, scratchy. "Right after you told me I was an adulterer?"

"I did."

"I won't ever forgive you. You _ruined _Shakespeare for me." He grabbed Derek's hand, the one without the ring. There were people, walking down the street, watching them. They did not care. Derek and Stiles were lost in their own world. He held it. "But I guess I ruined your marriage. Well, almost did. I'm guessing."

Derek drew Stiles closer to him.

"I would have wanted this to go on forever, Stiles. I would. But I can't be in love with you and be married to someone else. That's how my parents' marriage was. That's how everyone in my world works. We don't marry for love. We marry because we have to. I won't...I want to be different. I need to be. I can't have a wife and a _you._"

Stiles shook his head.

"What am I, Derek?"

"You are...too melodramatic" Derek breathed in his ear.

"Because I feel like you've tied me down on to a train. You know."

"You make it so hard not to love you back."

Stiles's breath settled.

"You're the ass who just gave me a one way ticket to the second circle of Hell."

Derek pinched his cheek.

"What was that for?" Stiles said.

"You were getting..." Derek stopped. He stopped and Stiles waited.

"Oh." Stiles wanted to disappear into this moment. "Cheeky."

"Yes."

"So. This is." Stiles hesitated.

"Our last night."

"Derek." Stiles said. "I want to be with you until that sun rises, alright? Let's...well let's have sex at least once...but during the sunrise, you need to be holding me. You need to be holding me. You promised. You would hold me if I asked you to. You need to be holding me during sunrise. And after that, it's..."

"Not yet." Derek said.

Stiles had asked Derek to walk with him, holding hands, talking about their lives for the first time, trying to squeeze every ounce of information, every strange anecdote they could, in the span of one night.

"Alright, so when I was eleven, I read this book: _History of the Male Circumcision_." Stiles bragged. "Practically memorized it."

"Do I even have to ask? Stiles Stilinski, you were one fucked up kid." Derek laughed. He squeezed Stiles's hand. "I want to talk to this Lydia girl of yours."

"Hey! She was my first girl-love." Stiles said.

"What am I?" Derek said

"My first he's-married-I'm-his-mistress love. And my first love-love."

Stiles and Derek had walked nearly the entire length of the Berkeley side of Telegraph Avenue. Stiles suggested they start walking back, if they wanted to make it back in time for sunrise.

"You are my first bratty love. My first whiny love." Derek kissed Stiles by the temple. The younger man wanted to ask if Derek loved his wife, if Derek still loved his wife, if Derek loved his wife more than he loved Stiles, but he knew that would spoil their only first date.

"Derek Hale. You want to play a game?"

"Shoot."

"If we could be together, what we would do?"

"Breakfast. I can hear your stomach." Derek said. Stiles looked down. He frowned. "Oreos don't constitute a meal. Neither does three shots of whiskey, apparently. Your turn."

"Christmas. You need to meet my Dad. He'd love you. He'd shoot you, but then he'd love you, because you're...calm. In comparison to me. Then you'd get me a watch or something expensive. I'd get you a Santa hat and make you wear it while we..._celebrate _in my room because, surprise, I've never actually done anything there. We'd wake up the next morning. My Dad would yell at us for being too loud. He'd roll his eyes and we'd walk over to the cemetery and greet my mom because out of every holiday she loved Christmas the most."

"Would I still be wearing the hat?"

Stiles takes a minute to respond.

"Yes."

"Why would you want me in _that _hat?"

Stiles was learning how perverted Derek could be.

"Alright. Two hats. The sex hat. The mom hat. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Your turn."

Derek pointed his eyes up. He thought for awhile before saying:

"I'd wake up next to you every morning. We'd share a bed, even if we were fighting, because when we'd fight, we'd have sex anyway. That's the kind of couple we would be, at least, in our hypothetical relationship. You cook. We both cook, actually, while we listen to NPR." Stiles groans. "Before we go to work, we kiss, and sometimes, that kiss leads to us being late to work, which is okay for me, because I own my own company, maybe not for you, because our kids need to go to school on time." Derek said.

"You've made me into a stay-at-home dad." Stiles said.

"Slash trophy wife." He added.

"This trophy wife is letting himself go, alright? It's Oreos and Chips Ahoy from now on. See if you can get a big enough case for me _then_."

"I'm not done. When I'm at work, I miss you so much, I want to quit. You have to convince me everyday not to, because we talk over the phone at least once before I come home, kiss you again, greet the kids, and enjoy the family we built together."

"Derek Hale, Mr. Domestic Bliss."

"Your turn. One more." Derek said.

"Okay." Stiles stopped walking. He drummed up his brain for more ideas before continuing down the road again. "Ah...you and I watch the same dumb television shows. Like _The Big Bang Theory. _Oh, speaking of BBT, we sing our kids our own version of _Soft Kittie, _copyright infringement and all, like _Soft Doggie _or _Soft Bunny._"

"I don't watch television."

"Okay. We sing _Soft Wolfie, _because you're a withholding grouch.They fall asleep. We go to the bedroom, and sometimes when I can't sleep, you sing it to me too, begrudgingly, through clenched teeth; yet you do it anyway. Maybe because you love me, maybe because you know I won't shut up until you do."

"Maniac." Derek said. "That's too kinky."

"In Derek-Stiles land, you're fine with all my kinks. Now, one last fantasy before this turns into a LARP." Stiles pronounced each letter of LARP, and he confused Derek, who had never heard the word before.

"LARP?" Derek asked.

"Live Action Role Play. Come on."

There was silence. A flash of headlights.

"We would...never try to break each other with silences. We would try to love each other, even when moving another inch seemed _impossible_, try so hard until everythinghurt. I'd bear it. You'd bear it. That's how we would be. When I look at you, Stiles, I can't help but feel like I would give everything to keep you. That's why, before, before I start getting too serious...this needs to end."

Stiles could feel Derek's grip loosen. He held tighter. He gripped harder. The longest and shortest night of their lives was coming to an end. Derek met Stiles halfway. They would not let each other go until the sun rose over the unsettled sky, touching over their lives, breaking the spell and finally bringing the dream to a close. Together they made their way back up the road.

The light had been slowly gaining over the sky.

"He's coming." Stiles said.

Derek held him. They were on the same street, on the same street curb, two lovesick bums, watching the night die and the day rise. Stiles had been cold, so Derek wrapped them both in his coat.

"He is." Derek said.

"We didn't have sex. Bummer." Stiles said.

"We had enough." Derek said. "I could never have enough of this."

"Of what? You have _so_ many cheesy lines, Derek Hale."

They sat and waited.

"Can ask you one thing, though." Stiles said. "Why did you tell me? Why didn't you just... keep it a secret? You know, I mean...we would have been fine you know..."

"You wanted to know who I was. You wanted in on my secrets. This is me. I don't...I've had to lie my way through life, Stiles, to survive in the family I was brought up in. With you, I wanted to be genuine. You were real with me, and I had to reciprocate. I'm brutally honest when it comes down to the defining issues in life, and that's the way it _has _to be for me to let you in. There's a reason I keep secrets. It's because the real me, the self underneath the screens, is a whirling mess that few, _very few_, have ever been able to accept. Now you know about the bullet you've just dodged. You don't have to put yourself through anything you don't need to." Derek finished. He finished. He was out of breath, and, from the drained look in his eyes, Stiles thought he was also out of spirit.

"Stop...trying to make yourself miserable." Stiles said.

"Not when I deserve to be."

"No one does. No one deserves to be miserable." Stiles stroked Derek's arm. "God. You're all gooey caramel in the center, huh?"

"Stiles...he's up." Stiles saw the sun rising above the hills. As it rose, Stiles's blood ran cold. He closed his eyes and felt the light burn through down to the pupil. He hated Derek. He loved him. He was warm. He was cold. There was a feeling surging through him, from the very bottom of his gut; he did not know what it was, and he did not know what it was asking him to do. Stiles merely felt it and let the sun rise. He felt Derek's warmth and let him go.

Derek walked over to his car. He opened the door to the driver's seat. Derek looked at Stiles once more. Not a word more. They both thought. No need to make this harder. No need for _that_ word. There was no good in this. There was no good in what they were doing to themselves. Stiles touched the glass. It was cool and wet. Birds flew. Sparrows. A familiar sound.

Stiles found himself rounding the distance of the car to meet Derek. Out on the street, lit in its entirety by sunlight, they met each other. Derek slipped his hands below Stiles's waist. They kissed. The two seemed to have fallen instead of leaned. They seemed to have dropped from their places standing into the other's and steadied themselves on the other's lips. Perhaps it was an accident. For all an outsider knew, it was. Yet, when they did fall, it was their choice to remain there in each other's arms, unyielding and impassioned even against the certainty of their struggle.

They could not say goodbye.


	4. Chapter 4

The plot thickens.

**Your Heart For My White Fences [4/10]**

The rain was falling.

Derek was absorbed in a sensation close to a dream. He had no sense of time, only a sense of picture, of color, of sound, the sound of drops hitting the glass, and memory, the memory of Stiles, his smell, his eyes, his breath, nothing specific enough to envision clearly, just specks and ideas solid enough to grasp between two fingers.

The clouds and the rain closed a grey curtain on the sun. The door to Derek's office swung open. His uncle Peter stormed in, carrying a manila folder, his air of confidence unsettling Derek's mood. What did he want this time? Derek thought. Uncle Peter was not the kind of man who came to anyone in person without a plan in mind, without a desire he wanted to fulfill. Derek was reluctant to give in to his uncle, but today he wanted to be alone.

"Uncle Peter." Derek said.

"Looking awfully reflective today, Derek." Peter replied. "Staring off into the rain, wondering just what your life is coming to, I suppose. I've been there. Now, why don't you tell me what's going on, and let me give you some well articulated advice."

Uncle Peter was beginning to mold the scenario to a particularly vicious Hale family game: a psychological test where two people tried to pry and protect their secrets from each other as best they could. Derek needed to keep Stiles from Peter, and Peter needed to keep whatever Peter needed to keep from Derek. He knew his Uncle well enough to know, instinctively, that at this very moment in time Peter was concealing information.

"Unnecessary. I was just thinking about the Shanghai conference next week. Are we still taking Gerry?" Derek deflected. "I'm beginning to suspect he doesn't speak Cantonese as well as he leads us to believe."

"I don't see why we keep Gerry on. He's a failure of a human being." Peter smiled. "Though I'm sure he told us that he spoke Cantonese in order to keep his job here, because he had been so adamant in the past about his lingual integrity."

There was a glint in his Uncle's eyes that Derek could not ignore.

"Suffice to say," Peter continued, "if Gerry is lying then we fire him. He isn't family, after all. If he were, I wouldn't bat an eye if he lied about going to college. Family makes most things forgivable. You simply have to ask."

"That's an interesting concept, Uncle." Derek said.

"I find it supremely interesting, Derek." Peter added. "Now, I have a few promising future acquisitions for you to look over. We might be gone all of next week, so, spend some time with your," Uncle Peter paused, "wife."

Peter's words struck Derek straight through the heart.

"I'll...see to that. Anything else?"

"Does she ask about the wedding ring?" Peter asked. "You've been looking to resize it for awhile now right, because, it's been a little constricting?"

"Just...haven't been able to resize it." Derek said. "No time."

Uncle Peter left the room. His laughter was soft, but Derek heard it all the same.

Three months had passed since their first date.

Their rules had been erased. Instead, they only abided by one: they kept no secrets from each other. Stiles told Derek everything, about his mother's death, to his misguided crush on Lydia, to Scott and Allison's Romeo and Juilet-esque romance, to Jackson's sexual identity crisis, and everything in between. Derek was willing to talk about everything: his family, his finances, his job, his insecurities, his sexual exploits over the years. Derek still avoided one subject, his wife. Stiles understood his restraint.

"Uh..." Stiles said. "Film sucks. No guaranteed job. Essays out the ass."

He had been up all night. Derek had a small condominium (bought one, to be exact, the month after they had started dating) a few blocks away from Stiles which he used to pull all-nighters. Derek dropped in earlier that morning carrying a bag of bagels and two cups of coffee. They ended up having breakfast together like two normal people in a long term relationship, talking about their week and how stressful their lives were becoming.

"I miss college. No real responsibilities. Just sex, some school, sleep, alcohol, more sex." Derek said. "You're in for a real wake-up call when you graduate."

"Well. I could just stay here and write screenplays while you support me."

Derek raised an eyebrow.

"Kidding." Stiles said. "I'm...I don't know. Going to graduate school. I think. LA or New York, most likely. That's where everyone goes."

"You could become my secretary. In my family, screwing our secretaries is a tradition." Derek said. "You would have great insurance, the kind that insures acupuncture and other superfluous treatments. Better than most executives."

"The Hales sound like a really faithful bunch." Stiles said.

"I was raised by wolves. Rich wolves." Derek imagined Uncle Peter as he said the word _wolf_. "I'll...I would want to continue this, even if you do move, I would...try and make this work if you would want to try with me."

Stiles grinned. He loved this Derek, the Derek that would stutter and blush in front of a twenty year old.

"Derek, you honestly thought that you would be able to get rid of me that easily? Of course, I'm already your mistress. That's the sort of crazy that can make long distance work."

"Don't call yourself my mistress, Stiles. You're more than that."

"Sideslice? Manstress? Booty-call? Artist-in-residence, cause I kinda live here now, because Jackson's having a mental episode as of late."

Derek wanted to use the word _soulmate_. He did not want to give Stiles that much power over him, so he slid it in his pocket. Eventually, he would tell Stiles how he felt about their situation, but not now, not when he was so irresolute about his wife, about his job, about their future.

_Derek, please meet me at the Vineyard. - Laura Hale_

His sister was on this side of the country, unannounced, which meant she wanted to catch Derek unprepared. He suspected Uncle Peter, but Laura and Peter had been on bad terms for years. Peter was the black sheep of the family. Laura was here for other reasons, and he did not need to put on his best guard.

_Laura, I will. - Derek Hale_

He texted her promptly. Derek had left Stiles at the condo an hour ago before heading to the non-profit organization he had poured money into earlier that year. They were working towards illiteracy, something to do with books in Africa. Every Hale had a _cause _they adopted. Laura saved the elephants. Derek's mother defended the 'traditional' definition of marriage being between a man and a woman and their respective lovers. Uncle Peter thought the idea of helping other people was ridiculous, which gave him the "particularly fun idea of a rhinoceros conservation organization called IONESCO'S RHINOS". He had raised millions of dollars for his cause, ironically, or as Uncle Peter put it, _rhinonically_.

Upon receiving the message from Laura, Derek turned his car around and headed up towards Napa, where the family owned a vineyard. Laura hated, absolutely deplored, Derek's wife, and she disliked Uncle Peter (hate was something a Hale reserved for people outside the family) so she always opted to stay at the vineyard whenever she wanted to visit, which meant Derek always made the trip up there to see her. Derek loved his sister enough to make the effort, though, he wished he had not had to.

When he arrived, Laura had the butler waiting for him by the doorway. Derek had forgotten his name, which was a faux paus and a sure way to piss of their mother, a woman raised in old wealth who lived for the rules.

"He's new, Derek. That's why you don't remember his name." Laura said. She was wearing an orange sundress, slippers, in the middle of February. "Alfonse, please leave us. I can take my brother out to the study myself."

The butler nodded and left. Laura led Derek to the small study, which was full of empty shelves, and a desk. Their father had used this room to write his memoir before he died, and it had not been used since.

"What brought you to California, Laura?" Derek asked.

"Visiting." Laura said. "That's all."

They both knew the score, and they both knew that Laura was here for more than just a visit. There was always an ulterior motive. Always. Derek watched Laura's steely face, not a single emotion present except for her welcoming eyes. She had learned to disguise her intentions. She was just as skilled as their Uncle, as their mother. Derek was hardly a Hale in that sense. She could read him through his eyes, his intense green eyes, that crashed and shivered like a vast, stormy sea.

"That's hardly the reason." Derek said, coldly.

"Fine. If we can't be civil, then...let's do what Hales do best, Derek. Get right down to the bloodshed." Laura opened a drawer, and pulled out a manila folder. She handed it to Derek.

Derek opened it. Inside were pictures of Stiles and him, kissing, holding hands, entering hotels, copies of receipts of the restaurants they had eaten in, the hotels. Phone records. Transcripts of emails, text messages. It was a detailed record of their entire relationship.

Laura waited for her brother's response. She sat on the edge of the desk while Derek looked over the files, the evidence, Uncle Peter had meticulously gathered over nine months. He was a cornered dog. He would do whatever it took to cover this up, to save his marriage, to keep himself from being thrown into a ditch.

"Don't make me..." Derek said. "Whatever it is you're going to make me do, I'll do it; just don't make me leave Stiles, because I won't."

But it was hardly the response she expected. Laura was thrown.

"Don't make you what? Derek...what about your wife?"

"I said." Derek said. "I won't leave Stiles."

"He's a second year film student and he...Derek, do you even realize what you're saying?" Laura could not believe Derek. "You're _ruining _your life. I came here to tell you to stop before this gets out of hand, but clearly...clearly you've lost all sense."

Laura's mouth was wide open. He had never seen his proud sister so shaken before, but Derek had never felt so righteous in his whole life.

"Who else knows?"

Laura said nothing.

"WHO ELSE KNOWS?"

Laura shut her eyes.

Derek slammed his fist into the desk and yelled once more:

"WHO ELSE KNOWS, LAURA?"

"Uncle Peter. Mother. Myself." She said. She regained her composure. Laura was just as cool under pressure as Derek, if not more so. "We are only looking out for your best interests, Derek."

"I know." He said. The blood was pumping through his veins. "Just...the thought of you trying to take Stiles away from me...what does Mother think of this?"

"She knows how our world works. She...understands that people have needs, and that you may not have the connection with your wife that she had with Dad. Though, she's concerned that...we all are concerned that you've become too serious."

"You're concerned that I might consider leaving Kate?"

"Yes." Laura said.

"Be concerned then. I'm considering it."

Derek turned around and left.

"You know our circumstances, Derek...the Argents won't..." Laura held herself in before she could speak another word. Her brother had found himself someone he loved. She should have been happy for him, happy that he was finally happy, but they lived in a cruel world where Derek's happiness came at a cost she was unsure they could pay. She wondered who the hell this Stiles was, and how he managed to melt the heart of someone who had been frozen over and over again.

_Where are you?_

Derek headed straight back to Berkeley after seeing Kate. It was raining again.

_At the apartment. Jackson's throwing a temper tantrum. Why?_

Derek parked his car out on the street and paid for six hours. He needed to see Stiles. His heart was pumping blood in several different directions, and he needed to find an anchor, something to settle him down.

_Can I see you? I'm downstairs._

He had escaped that life. He had escaped that life of meddling, of expectations, of Laura and Mother trying to mold him into the perfect man. He wanted out. He wanted Stiles.

_Well, I can't exactly...go out right now. My friends are here._

Derek could not take no for answer. What the hell did he have to lose? Kate would find out soon. She probably already knew. Peter, Laura, and Mother were planning a crusade against him.

_I'd like...to meet them. If you'll let me._

He stared at the door, and waited. It opened. Stiles was on the other side, panting, red in the face. He had run all the way downstairs. He leaned on Derek for support, trying to catch his breath.

"I can't...what? You don't even know...Derek! I can finally get in on their couples nights if you...I mean, you're a bit older but...that doesn't make you any worse at pictionary."

"Right." Derek said. He kissed the top of Stiles's head. "Can I come up.?"

"Oh yeah! Jackson's going to flip. He's sort of going through this right now about his ex, and he's being a real douche about it." Stiles led Derek up the stairs. "Lydia's here. She and Jackson are a 'couple' but they're basically just...I don't know. Platonic soulmates. Scott and Allison are the power couple of our group. You know, dating since they were in high school."

_Soulmates_. He felt the word spark in his pocket.

"Relax." Derek said.

"RELAX?" Stiles said. "You're kidding, relax. I'm finally going to show off my hot boyfriend and you're telling me to relax, _shit_. I'll relax you."

They arrived on the third floor. "There's my door."

"Wait a second, Stiles." Derek said.

He kissed Stiles. It was a hungry kiss. He kissed him as if they had not seen each other in years, and they were making up for lost time. To Derek, he was always making up for lost time with Stiles. The sixth months he spent trying to ignore his feelings, cutting the relationship off at sex, he needed to make up for all his mistakes. He also needed to make up for all the years he spent waiting for Stiles. All the years he spent married to Kate. He kissed Stiles. It was a thirsty kiss.

"Oh God." Stiles said. "Let's...we gotta do it later."

"Right." Derek said. He opened the door into the apartment. There were four surprised faces staring at him. One particular set of eyes that he was certain he had seen before.

"Good news everyone," Stiles announced, "this is my boyfriend. His name is Derek. He exists. He is real, and he is not a _hooker_, Jackson."

Sitting next to Scott on the couch was Derek's niece, Allison Argent. She had been the flower girl at his wedding. He attended her birthday party most years. From the look on her face, she recognized him too.

A mix of surprise, delight, and horror in the room.

"Nice job Stiles!" Lydia said. "How old is he?"

"Twenty-seven." Allison said.

"How'd you know that?" Stiles said.

Scott looked at her. Allison looked at Derek. Derek gulped.

"Lucky guess." She added. "Twenty-seven is just...such a good age."

"Random." Scott said. He put his arm around her shoulder. "Random is cute."

Stiles showed Derek around to his friends, leaving out any detail that might allude to the fact that he was married. Allison remained quiet. She clung to Scott, gently smiling her way through an uncomfortable situation, an Argent like her aunt in every conceivable way. His world pervaded down to this level. The social games Allison and Derek played were subtle and undetectable to anyone else in the room. Derek knew she was holding the information back for some reason. What that was, he needed to figure out. Blackmail was a powerful thing.

The doorbell buzzed.

"Pizza's here!" Scott said.

"I got it." Derek offered. "I'll pay for it."

Allison made her move.

"Let me go with you." Allison said. "I kinda want to stretch my legs. Scott's bound me to this couch all night."

Allison and Derek exited the apartment together. Derek felt his stomach lurch. The moment the door shut behind them, Allison pounced.

"Uncle Derek, what the hell are you doing with Stiles?"

"Allison..." Derek said

"I know how our world works, okay? Aunt Kate has her own...arrangements, but Stiles doesn't deserve to be your sidepiece." Allison forced her way through her sentence. It was difficult for her talk about marriage and what was demanded of people. Derek knew why. "He's got a heart of gold. He needs to be loved the right way."

"Does Scott know about the engagement?"

"No. He doesn't." Allison said. "I can't tell him."

"Stiles knows about Kate. We...were going to break things off. We couldn't." Derek said. "I couldn't leave him."

"Uncle Derek, I won't...I won't say a word about this to anyone. It's not my place, and if this got out, especially to Scott, it'd tear our group apart. You know Scott's dad left his mom for another woman, right? If he knew Stiles was...he would never understand."

"They're not like us, Allison. They weren't raised by wolves." Derek said. He pulled out his wallet. The delivery man was waiting on the other side of the screen door. Derek gave him the hundred, and told him to keep the change. As Derek handed the man the bill, the rain started up again.

"Do you like the rain, Allison?"

"It's soothing." She said. "I can't say why."

"Yeah." Derek saw the drops fall one by one. Where they dropped was undetermined, a random thing, a thing of beauty and grace. "Yeah. It is."


	5. Chapter 5

Here we are at the half-way junction of this story. Ah...this is actually where things get difficult. Everything works towards the ending. If you were wondering where the hell Derek wife is during all this, we won't see Kate for awhile. She's like Jaws. She's scarier because she's omnipresent but unseen. Thanks to everyone who comments and reviews. I do try to respond to all of them.

**Your Heart For My White Fences [5/10]**

Therein Derek's head was the re-creation of his old house, the Hale estate, rendered in black and white. Why it was there and where he had gathered the melancholy to visit again, the old hall of horrors, the den of where the wolves learned how to nip and howl, he did not know. Dreams often went on without pretense: they dropped you into such and such a place and you were subject to their delights and their torments. Derek, in his adult body, a body that had not stepped foot into the old estate in years, began to walk through the front lawns and their monolithic stone carvings leading up into the house itself: the Hales lived handsomely from years of accumulated wealth and ruthless greed. They were an old family with old secrets.

He did not use the front door. He knew better than to use the front door. There would be a butler waiting for him, and the butler would report him to mother. Mother had too much to say to Derek. She would bear her fangs. Her doll's eyes would flash red as she told him every wrong he was committing against her for following his heart and choosing to remain with Stiles. Derek's mother was love. Derek's mother was hate. She could love. She could hate. She did both at the same time without any question or conflict; Derek had not seen this from anyone else in his entire life. He wondered why he was—despite all the domineering and the manipulation—such a devoted son, sending money and managing her finances so she could maintain the lifestyle that constituted the core identity of Mrs. Hale. She still favored Laura. She always, always liked Laura better than Derek.

Derek choose the servant's entrance. In the greyscale version of the old house, he found a small line of red, splattered out, leading into the servant's entrance, which opened into the kitchen. This was his favorite area. This was his playground. He made his first friends here, with maids and the cooks, asking questions and being made meals. The line of red had come from the great red scene in the kitchen: Derek, in the great fugue of his dream, saw the kitchen covered in red fluid, thick and viscous, like coagulated blood, warm and sticky. At that point he wanted to wake up, to end the dream and remind himself of the room he was in, but he was welling with curiosity.

He stepped into the mess. Fear rose. He was afraid of the liquid. He was afraid that he would drag unto a rug, one of the fine Persians in the studies, and receive his mother's cold shoulder. The cold winds of hell! What was a mother who ignored their child out of _anger_? Mrs. Hale was nothing but ice to the very center. He stepped through despite his hesitations. He made his way through the fear because he felt as though the dream had something in store for him, a lesson or a memory he needed to bring back to the waking world. Derek descended deeper into the wolves' den with that hope in his pocket.

In the hallway, the walls were bleeding. Derek began to think of the liquid as _blood_ rather than as red liquid. He did not know why, but that was how the sequence played out. He knew that was the way. He wanted to find his father's study. Mr. Hale worked in the East Wing, often into the lonely hours of the early morning, in a large room lined with bookshelves. He had married into the Hale family, despite knowing the hellish world the Hales occupied, because he loved Mrs. Hale. If he could talk to his father, understand him, there was an answer to his situation with Stiles.

Derek pushed through the liquid. It had reached up through to his waist. Soon, he was swimming through it. Eventually, he reached the study, and there was only dryness. He twisted the doorknob. He stepped through. He pushed through. He looked. There, sitting at his father's familiar desk, was Kate, Kate Argent Hale, his wife, and there, lying on his father's familiar desk, was Stiles, Stiles the light Derek had found and nearly lost, Stiles the sparrow of providence, Stiles Stilinski his earth and his ocean. Stiles staring at him, wearing a familiar band shirt, one of the bands Stiles had tried and tried to get Derek to listen to, Kate smiling, the dagger deep in Stiles's gut, the look of utter horror on Stiles's face, the what is happening to me and why has she done this to me and why can't you help me Derek in Stiles's eyes.

"What a cutie." Kate said.

She twisted the knife deeper and the room spun round until the books fell off the shelves and Derek collapsed onto his knees, unable to stand the sight of Stiles suffering for his sake. He grasped his temples and tried to force himself awake but the scene would not end: Kate, the director, refused to call cut. She simply continued twisting and Stiles simply continued screaming. He had never heard him scream before. He had only heard him cry, moan, laugh. He was a happy thing and he did not deserve Kate's cruelty. Kate the cruel, Kate the wife, Kate who he needed to leave, Kate who he could not love, and the reason behind all that was shrouded in years of enforced forgetting.

Derek was caught in a nightmare. He needed to be saved. Stiles, more than he, needed to be saved. He had been forced into this. He had been caught in a web more dangerous and more unforgiving than he could have ever imagined. The spiders were not the kind that ate to survive: they ate for pleasure. They ate because eating, because liquifying the insides of another being, was pleasurable to their sadistic souls. Derek wanted out. He wanted to wake up. He was drowning in dry air.

"Derek," a little girl said. He felt her hand on his shoulder. Why had he forgotten her? Why had he not thought of her everyday of his wasted life? Derek woke up. There were tears in his eyes. He was not the kind of man who ever cried. Those tears were pulled out of him. Those tears were wrenched from him in the worst possible way.

—

"Derek," Stiles said. They had slept together in the same bed, Stiles's bed, the night after Stiles introduced Derek to the gang. Derek had been tossing and turning for the last fifteen minutes. Stiles tried to wake him up, shook him, called out his name, and it seemed like he was finally coming to. Whatever he had been dreaming about, it had taken a helluva lot out of Derek, because he was sweating like mad.

"Derek." Stiles said. Derek had thrown his arm around Stiles. It was such a romantic position to be in before the entire nightmare episode. Stiles and Derek rarely spent the night together, and if they did, it was only for a few hours, the short hours between the dark early morning and the sunrise. Derek was coming to. Stiles could breathe easy.

"You had me worried." Even in the shadowy room, Stiles could see Derek's deeply red eyes open. He had been crying in his sleep. "Fuck. Okay. What _exactly _did you dream about?"

Derek looked at him. Without asking, Stiles knew what Derek needed. Stiles let him lay his head on his lap.

"You're supposed to be the adult here." Stiles said. He ran his hand through Derek's hair, massaging his scalp. "If you had a bad dream, just remember, it was just a dream."

"Stiles..." Derek said. His voice was weak, cracking. "My family knows about us. Not my wife. Just my family. I'm not...this is not good for either of us."

The look on Stiles's face, one of surprise then of calm, was unexpected, and after some deliberation on Derek's part, completely expected.

"Okay. We can deal. I think. Have they said anything?"

"When I get into work tomorrow, I'll talk to Uncle Peter, and knowing Laura, she'll be there at some point, waiting to get her word in before she flies back to New York."

Stiles played with Derek's ear.

"I mean...Derek, you can...you can always just leave me...I'm what, a college student with a useless major and you're this...investment genius god with a prestigious pedigree and a hot wife. I won't...at this point, I won't love anyone like I love you, but I would understand if you left. I'd...want you to have your life more than I would want to have you with me." Stiles said. He gulped a few times between words, stuttered, afraid of Derek's reaction, but in the end, he said what he wanted to say.

"I don't think I was alive until I met you." Derek said. "My life and You are one in the same."

Stiles leaned down to meet Derek for a short kiss. They were entrenched in each other. Turning back had long been an impossibility. They would either sink or swim.

Derek woke up alone. Stiles had left for his morning classes; he looked at the alarm clock at the bedside desk. 10:34 AM. When was the last time he had woken up this late on a weekday, he wondered? Stiles did strange things to him. He truly did.

Slipping away from the covers, Derek decided to make use of the shower before heading off to work. He kept a change of clothes in his office. As he opened the door, he was met by two amused faces. Stiles's roommates: Scott and Jackson. Scott had stayed over Allison's—who was Derek's niece—last night to _give _Derek and Stiles the room. He had to thank him for that, though Scott looked hardly pleased with Derek at the moment.

"Alright...Derek, right?" Scott said. "Jeez. I can't believe you're real."

"I can't believe he's not a male prostitute." Jackson said. He was jotting notes down on a notebook. "I mean...Stilinski and _this guy_."

Stiles had not exaggerated when he used the word _douchebag _to describe Jackson, but Derek had met worse, much worse. Jackson felt like a wounded puppy in comparison to uncle Peter, a full-fledged alpha wolf, looking to rub everyone the wrong way to assert his inappropriate dominance.

"I am real. I exist, and I am dating Stiles." Derek said. "Excuse me, but could I use your shower? I am about to head into work."

Scott nodded in approval.

"This late?" Jackson said. "Just call in. Show your boss a picture of Stilinski. Tell them you had some charity work to do."

Derek smiled. He shook his head. "Do you have any towels I would be able to..."

"Use Stiles's. They're in our bedroom. I think they're clean." Scott said.

He pivoted and headed back into the room. He overheard Jackson saying something that equated to _it's not a walk of shame if the guy is freaking shameless! What a douchebag. _He would have knocked Jackson's teeth in by now if he had not been Stiles's roommate. Derek grabbed one of Stiles's towels, which were on top of his drawers, and walked back outside into the living room, where Jackson was pretending to have a normal conversation with Scott about, if Derek was hearing it correctly, butterflies.

"The migration patterns of Monarchs is really fascinating Scott..."

Derek ignored him and passed through the bathroom door. They were an interesting bunch, Stiles's friends, and he was happy to know that Stiles had good people around him, people willing to take care of him when Derek was not around. Derek _wanted _to be around. He peeled his clothes off with that thought in mind: he could fit into this life. He could, if Stiles was willing, insert himself into this world of young adult problems and inconsistencies. He could wake up every morning with his hands wrapped around Stiles's waist.

How perfect would that life be? He thought. He thought again. He thought once more, and then turned on the water.

Derek had to take the back stairwell in order to get to his office, in order to change without being noticed by any of his staff, save for his secretary, and possibly his uncle, who may or not be waiting for him in his office, claws and teeth at the ready to strike. After the _shit _he pulled with Laura, all the fires that had gone off that morning were his to solve.

To Derek's honest surprise, Laura and uncle Peter were in his office, having coffee and talking like civil human beings. It was a ruse, because they hated each other on a fundamental level, but Hales, no matter how they felt, would do what they needed to accomplish their goals, even consort with the people they despised with every fiber of their being. If only Derek had someone in his family who saw the situation his way.

"Derek, nice to see you in yesterday's clothes. Coming in for a change?" Laura said.

"Memory as sharp as it always was, Laura?" Derek snapped back. He opened a closet built into the wall. "You two mind stepping out of the room for a minute? I'm about to get dressed."

"Of course. But we do need to talk Derek. It's important." Peter said. "Dire importance."

Wolves. He could feel their breaths on his neck as they walked past him into the door. As Derek heard the door shut, he picked up his change of clothes and began dressing. The instant he finished, he heard a knock. Laura let herself in, and uncle Peter followed her. Derek was finishing looping his belt when they were back in the same positions they were when they started.

"What is so important that you two put aside your seething hatred of each other to speak to me together about it?" Derek asked.

Laura smirked. "It's your birthday. Next week. Remember?"

That was true. Derek had forgotten completely. He usually never celebrated his birthdays; he treated the day as any other day. Kate would cajole him into taking them both out to dinner, and he would. Sometimes they would have sex, but she would always have the smell of another man or woman on her. It made him sick to his stomach to make love to her, make love to her like he was one of the many who could.

"No, I didn't. It's strange that _you _did." Derek said. "It's baffling that you did uncle Peter."

"Frankly, I'm insulted that you think so little of me. I'm not surprised, but I'm insulted." Peter said. "We've arranged for a little...family excursion. To the San Francisco Zoo. This Saturday. The day before the actual day."

Derek raised an eyebrow. Laura and Peter put a lot of money into the zoo for their respective charities. Laura for the elephants, and Peter for the rhinos. He had no idea _why _they thought that was in any way an appropriate twenty-eighth birthday present.

"Well. I hope you two enjoy yourselves."

"We would like to invite you and Stiles Stilinski, age 20, birthplace Beacon Hills, California." Peter said. "I mean...we would like to know the kid before you bring him into the family."

"That's _not_ happening." Derek spit. "You two are never meeting Stiles." He knew them instinctively as the kind of people who would torture Stiles without even trying, finding avenues into his mind with tiny, penetrating questions.

"This is non-negotiable Derek. Either we meet Stiles and evaluate him, or we inform Kate that you're absolutely in love with him." Laura said.

"Kate would not care. She has no right to care if I sleep with someone else." Derek said, trying to ignore the fact that Laura used the phrase _absolutely in love_. "She's always done the same. She's always been unfaithful."

"That's not the issue here. The issue is that you're finally willing to leave her." Laura said. "The Argents _hate _being dumped."

"They are an old family. Just like ours. More rigid and less fun-loving, but still old and entrenched in the old ways." Peter added. "Now, we're just calculating a few moves ahead here. Let's see if Stiles is worth all the pain and suffering before our family starts making the necessary preliminary moves."

Derek was confused. A little stupefied, even, that Laura and uncle Peter seemed to want to help him.

"Wait, are you supporting me?"

"Derek, of course. You are family." Laura said. "What you want, we have to want as well. You're my brother. I want you to be happy. More than that: I want you to be fulfilled."

"The Argents had this coming to them, as well." Peter said with a smile. "But we won't throw our cards into this fight unless Stiles is an adequate match for you, Derek. So let us meet him."

"The San Francisco Zoo? My birthday? The day before my birthday, to be exact." Derek wondered why his chest felt so bright and uninhibited. Laura had never spoken to him like that before, and uncle Peter, well, uncle Peter had charm but his charm was seldom real. Just then, Derek sensed authenticity in his words, in the way he expressed himself.

"Yes." Laura said. "What do you say?"

"Yes. Yes. I'll ask him now." Derek pulled out his cellphone to ask Stiles. No, he would ask Stiles in person. He would drop in later that day and ask Stiles in person, because he wanted to be happy with Stiles, because in the first time in a long time, the pieces in Derek's life were finally fitting together. He stared at his phone, at the wallpaper of Stiles and him holding each other over the Golden Gate Bridge during a date they had a few weeks ago, and he smiled.

Laura and Peter noticed. Derek, too absorbed in his own elation, failed to notice the glance they gave each other, the subtle acknowledgement of a plan within a plan.


	6. Chapter 6

Your Heart For My White Fences [6/10]

Stiles could feel his body shaking, from the tips of his toes to the back of his skull; the pulses were intermittent, coming at intervals in the tens of seconds, frequent enough to worry him, infrequent enough to allow him to dress up for his upcoming date. He was teeming with a special brand of boyhood excitement—the kind that took more than the daily dose's worth of Adderall to bring down—because he had never been to the San Francisco Zoo, let alone been given an after hours tour by head zookeeper and the family of his already married but soon to be possibly unmarried boyfriend Derek Hale.

Derek left a text message awhile ago, maybe fifteen minutes, reminding Stiles to get ready to run if the situation gets tense. Derek had been coaching Stiles the entire week: telling him what to say and what not to say, giving him detailed histories on his sister and uncle, their favorite mind games, their weaknesses and their strengths. It all sounded like a bad soap opera to Stiles, but the situation was real to Derek. He had to care and he had to play along, memorize their queues and their giveaways, because Derek mattered to him. He was more than willing to prove that, and Derek promised him—he had this in writing—that he would go to one of Stiles's Dungeons and Dragons games if he learned how to work the Hale family like a Hale.

Stiles loved D&D. He loved it, and he knew Derek would hate it; but he would make him watch, maybe make him play, anyway.

Stiles decided to look a little, snazzy, for his date with the Hales. He wore a sweater vest with a bowtie and slacks, the kind of outfit that made Jackson laugh and cry out faggot. Stiles saw no harm in the word: Jackson was just being the hypocritical douche he had so keenly built himself up to be. Stiles had seen him tongue, stroke, even blow guys in the living room and kitchen of their shared apartment. On the surface, Jackson was the sort of guy that deserved to be loathed, but his friends knew him for who he was. Friendship blew past the surface bullshit into the real core identity where people were truly themselves.

Jackson hated himself more than anyone. Most people liked to ignore the fact that he did, liked to call him a douchebag and liked to point out the fact that he treated the people who had genuine feelings for him—referring most recently to the sweet Isaac Lahey kid Jackson absolutely destroyed the other month—like complete shit. Once you knew Jackson a little, once you saw him stare at himself in the mirror with this look of utter disgust, then you understood that this guy, all the outside stuff, that was an act. There was pain under his pore free skin. If you ever felt pain in your life, you could empathize. You had to.

Stiles had been worrying about Jackson. They all were particularly worried about Jackson lately, especially when Matt Daehler, Jackson's first love and push off the cliff into crazy town, had just transferred in that semester. They had been in a discreet but passionate relationship in their sophomore year at Beacon Hills High, until Allison transferred in; Matt just dropped Jackson like a an old hat and began to doggedly chase her as if she was the only thing in the world that existed. The only justice Jackson ever saw from the entire Matt fiasco was the fact that Scott was the one who won Allison over in the end.

Whenever Jackson saw Matt around campus, he would go completely bat shit insane for awhile. Today was one of those days. Jackson called Isaac over, Isaac who was completely captivated by Jackson, and they were currently sexing Jackson's troubles away. It was a vicious cycle that would probably end in a murder-suicide. Whether it was Jackson killing Matt then himself or Isaac killing Jackson then himself was the question.

Stiles had a terribly dark sense of humor. He blamed Derek completely. He blamed Derek, and Derek's obsession with Breaking Bad. Scott entered the room. He looked tired. He had every right to be, trying to deal with Jackson. Stiles usually helped out, but with Derek's birthday coming up, he was otherwise occupied. "Dude, we need to do something about Jackson and Matt." Scott said. "This is getting out of hand."

Stiles perked his eyebrows. He agreed. He needed to adjust his bowtie, however, and that was taking up all of his limited focus.

"I'm thinking about sitting down with Jackson and Matt...you know, trying to get them to talk about things. With me, maybe Lydia too, as the referee. Maybe just Lydia. Allison might be a sore spot for Matt..."

"Yeah. How are you going to do that?" Stiles asked. Scott shook his head, and looked at him. He really wanted to care about Jackson, about Scott and the stress on his shoulders, but Stiles wanted to go on his date. Scott was too good a friend not to notice how happy Stiles was, for the first time in a long time.

"You're really excited for this, huh? Meeting his sister and uncle?"

"Curly fries excited, Scott." Stiles said. "It's happening."

Stiles then realized that he was still lying to him about Derek. The truth about Derek lay underneath the surface, waiting to spring up and rain acid on their long standing friendship. Derek was married. Stiles felt the guilt surge through his veins, the unearthly mix of cold and warm, of acid and of ice. Derek was married. Scott did not know, and Scott would freak out, no, Scott would blow up if he knew that Stiles was trying to force a married man to leave his wife.

"This is...what happens to good people, Stiles. I think. When we're good. When we don't...when we treat people right. You know?" Scott, Scott, Stiles thought, not this conversation. "I mean...we waited a long time for things to fall into place for us, but now they have. You have Derek. I have Allison. It's...good. We're good. Things are only going to get better."

Stiles thought about Scott and his father. He remembered the years Scott spent resenting the man who walked out on his family for another woman.

"Yeah." The vibration in Stiles's pocket signaled his exit. Derek was here to pick him up. He was freezing. He was melting. "I'm...Derek's here."

"Oh. Okay. Have fun! Dude, get me a plushie. Get all of us plushies, okay? One for Isaac too. He needs a big one."

Stiles made his way out of the apartment, feeling like a complete bag of shit for all the lies he threw at his best friend. He hoped, prayed, that there would be a way to explain all that had happened with Derek to Scott without wrecking everything they had built over the years. He hoped. Losing Scott, well, losing Scott was like losing a piece of him. Losing Scott was like losing his dad, like losing Derek, a future he refused to imagine. There were futures you imagined for yourself. Futures you imagined you would avoid. Then, there were futures that were so revolting to your ego, your mind, which was supposedly capable of an infinite level of imagination, went blank.

The San Francisco Zoo sat near the coast. The sun had already begun to descend, but the Keepers left the lights on for the Hales as they strolled around with their guest of honor. Between Laura, or Derek's evil female twin, and uncle Peter, Derek's evil female mentor, and Derek, Stiles's evil boyfriend, the night had gone surprisingly well. Stiles and Derek had arrived late, about fifteen minutes after Peter and Laura, who were already at the front gate, chatting about something or other, both wearing designer shades when there was hardly any sun out. Derek had told Stiles that they would wear shades if they could. They covered up the eyes, and the eyes gave away a lot more than people wanted them to. Stiles had never understood some of Derek's quirky behavior until meeting his family. It was an illuminating moment for them both.

Peter was a tall man with soft blue eyes, and the kind of face you found plastered on the front of old magazines. He never took the spotlight. He never tried to monopolize the conversation: he was always lurking, waiting, scheming, but the fact that he was so goddamned handsome and charming made it difficult to realize what kind of person he really was. Derek knew him inside and out. Stiles, on the other hand, believed in the shy, reserved uncle Peter without a bad thought in his head. Derek worried more about uncle Peter than he did about his sister. Laura, a power player, held in her relentless need to assert her dominance by trying to keep up with Stiles's in a conversation, which meant matching his attention deficient mind topic for topic without fail.

"I did not know that about Bengal Tigers, Stiles..." Laura said. "I always assumed that the mating habits of the great cats were relatively the same across the species."

Derek suppressed his smile. Uncle Peter did not. They had not even gone fifteen feet past the zoo entrance when Laura started to sink.

"Common misconception. Well, in lions, arguably the most social species, the mating habits are more competitive amongst the males. There's an Alpha. I guess if you wanted to compare it to anything, you could say they're more canine. In the more isolated species, practically everyone else, it's sort of like, whoever's closest." Stiles said. Proudly.

"Are you a zoology major?" Laura said, as if she had not done a thorough background check on Stiles already. "You seem to know quite a lot."

"I think...I mean, people should know this stuff, right?" Stiles said.

Laura winced.

In Derek Hale's book, if you could unnerve his sister, then you were something special. He wrapped an arm around Stiles and took him close, sending the non-verbal message to Laura and Peter: mine. Did he even have to worry at all? Uncle Peter and Laura expressed their desire to support Derek in whatever he decided to do, and Derek was, at that point, sure that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Stiles Stilinski. All he had to do was divorce his wife. Simple, really. He wanted to believe the process would be simple, but with Kate, nothing was.

Uncle Peter and Laura were equally as complicated.

"Stiles, how do you feel about Derek, given his present marital status?" Peter said. "I mean, you are making him a dishonest shit. Not like I care. Not like Laura cares."

"No, I don't have the slightest reservation." Laura said. "My husband is probably fucking our pool boy as we speak. It's better that you find a gay man to marry, anyway. That's what mother told me. No unnecessary pregnancies to clean up should he make a mistake."

Derek felt his stomach flip at Laura's words. She was picking them carefully. Trying to keep Derek from interrupting. They passed exhibit after exhibit. Stiles looked around, but Laura and Peter continued their joint lecture, intent on something that Derek needed to figure out before Stiles was locked into whatever shit storm they had cooked up.

"You see, Stiles, we Hales learn something when we are young. A vital lesson. You know what that is?" She said. They arrived at the exhibit marked: Gray Wolves. Derek watched. He worried that Laura would tell Stiles about the baby if he spoke out of turn.

"What?" Stiles said, weakly. He was afraid. He had to be.

"Everyone is somebody else's prey." Peter signaled one of the zookeepers waiting in the wings. "Everyone is a predator."

The zookeeper nodded. Another keeper came into the enclosure pulling something by a rope, a lamb. A lamb, barely able to walk. The keeper nodded at Laura, and tied the lamb up to a small stump. It shook. Stiles shook. Derek grabbed his hand, trying, desperately trying, to soothe him. Every Hale had been taught this lesson as a child. The show was meant to kill their innocence. The show awakened their inner-wolf. The instinct to kill or be killed.

"Do you know what my favorite poem is, Stiles?" Peter said. "William Blake's 'The Lamb'. I had first read it when I was fifteen, but it brought me back to my sixth birthday. Our favorite poems often bring us back to early childhood." Derek heard the sound of cages being opened. "Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?" Peter added a tune to the words. "Oh, the memories."

Saliva dripped. Derek could see the anguish, the hunger, the pain in their eyes. Wolves hurt as lambs hurt. They probably had been deprived food for a number of days, leading up to this classic Hale event. Laura and Peter had planned the trap for awhile, and if Stiles wanted to join their family, he needed to learn a lesson dear to every Hale's heart. The lamb quivered and collapsed onto its knees, in a vain attempt to hide, but the wolves were already on him. He was helpless. He was helpless from the very beginning. He was helpless, so helpless that his life seemed meaningless, just a bloody mess on the enclosure floor to be cleaned up at the end of the day. A bloody mess, too indistinct to have an identity of its own. You wouldn't have known a lamb had been there at all.

—

Stiles was having one of the worst panic attacks of his life. He hated blood more than anything, not anything, maybe not more than...no, blood freaked him the fuck out. Derek had carried him to the restroom so he could vomit into the park toilet. Derek Hale, his boyfriend, the guy who was supposed to protect him and love him and everything him stood silent as he was verbally abused by his two relatives and forced to watch an innocent an animal get torn to shreds by a pack of angry wolves. Everything fit together, and it was all very fucking thematic which somehow made the whole experience so much worse.

He vomited. He vomited again.

"Stiles..." Derek said. His eyes were wide. He had his pitiful Derek look. Stiles could see through it now. He was over it. He was over all the lies, all the games, all the ways Derek could play him. "Just, get out. I need to...fuck...be alone." Stiles said. He turned around. If he looked at Derek any longer, he would fall victim to those eyes again, because at his core, Derek was pitiful. He was a weak man who wanted things. He wanted things, threw them away, picked them up, and threw them away again, until they were so worn no one could want them.

"Stiles...I'm here, yeah? I'm here..." Derek's hand found Stiles's shoulder. "Don't ask me to go."

"GO, DEREK. JUST THIS ONCE, LET ME BE." Stiles's throat was raw from the acid in his vomit and from the impact of his scream. He coughed. Derek withdrew his hand, and left. He left without another word.

—

Derek wanted to kill his sister and uncle. He would not, but the feeling was honestly bubbling inside him. When he exited the restroom, he was rolling his fingers around in his fists, trying to channel a volcanic mix of anger and despair threatening to burn right through his insides.

"YOU TWO HAD NO RIGHT." Derek said. "He's... NO. I'm done with this family. I'm done. This is the last straw." Derek was breathing heavily. He felt as though steam was rising through him. "You two are on your own."

Laura smiled. Sadistic bitch, she smiled, and looked to uncle Peter.

"We had every right. If he was going to be with you, he would have had to see this, anyway. What? Were you going to pretend like you weren't the despicable son-of-a-bitch that you are, Derek?" Laura said.

"We can't play pretend forever Derek, and today, the game ends. At least," uncle Peter, "it ends for you and Stiles, because she's about to make her finishing move."

Derek felt a cold fear rising.

"Don't tell me..."

"She was the one who put us up to this whole thing, Derek. She's the one who brought Laura down from New York, who told me, who researched Stiles. Do you I give a shit about your love life? I don't." Peter said. "Don't look back. She's probably already gotten to him."

Derek looked back. He started to run. He begged his feet to tread faster as he rushed into the restroom. Stiles was gone. He raced towards the entrance, hoping to catch them on the road, perhaps, try and...do something before Kate managed to completely destroy Stiles, kill him, send him away, torture him, or worse, reveal everything. That was the absolute worst for him, wasn't it? For all his secrets to get out into the open. For Stiles to know everything about him. For Stiles to see him as the pitiful shell of a man he honestly was.

He passed exhibit by exhibit until he made it to the front entrance, not stopping, not losing speed, instead, gaining speed as he thought more about losing Stiles. Panting, he was unable to get a clear image, but what he saw in the distance, no, the image was clear enough for him to know for sure, that he saw Kate drive away with Stiles in the passenger seat, her blonde hair blowing behind her as she rode off in the convertible he bought her last Christmas. He had lost him. Stiles was gone. Perhaps forever this time. Derek stared at the pavement. How long was it since he last cried? When that little baby girl died, yes. When she died, and went unnamed, he cried for her. He cried for her, and he swore never to cry again.


	7. Chapter 7

Woah. I can't believe we're at chapter 7! 3 more chapters to go, and I'm buzzing to write them. You might fall in love with Kate in this chapter. You might. I can't guarantee that you will. This fic is pretty hard on me to write, and there are some parts I really...really feel terrible about writing. There's a story I want to tell though, and I think in the end, there's worth in that. Worth enough for me to keep going.

**Your Heart For My White Fences [7/10]**

She was, in a word, beautiful.

Everything about her was beautiful, from the shine in her blonde hair, to the green glow in her eyes, to the gentle bronze in her skin, to the fire of her soul: all of her, gapless in the weave of the perfect human woman. She had found Stiles in the bathroom puking his guts out into a toilet, and she had dragged him out by his sweater vest with a single hand, a strong hand, a merciless one. She asked him to talk. She told him she was Kate Argent Hale, Derek's wife, a woman he should be familiar with. She pointed to her face with a finely manicured nail, and she said that this was the face that Stiles had been spitting in these last few months. Stiles, disoriented, in shock, and plainly afraid, stared at her. He stared at her, and he faintly nodded—the barest form of agreement—when she asked him to follow her to her car.

This was the woman on the other side of Derek's marriage. This was the faceless woman he had ignored, whose husband Stiles loved. She drove with one hand on the very top of the steering wheel, the other on the stick; she wore pants, a white shirt that was thin enough to reveal the outline of her laced bra, and a brown leather jacket. Stiles held onto the hand rest; he was bracing himself for the worst. When they left the zoo, she was quiet, as if she was waiting for Stiles to make his move, patiently waiting for him to move so she could strike, a predator lurking in the tall grasses. He was sick of predators. He was sick of Derek, and the people who came pre-loaded with Derek and all his cowardly bull shit.

"Seatbelt." Kate said. "Now."

He did what he was told. Stiles fastened the belt, and looked down at his lap, waiting for her to speak again. She was in control. She had been this entire time; hell, she could kill him. Stiles was too weak to defend himself, too weak in the spirit, too hurt in the gut. This could be his last night on earth, and he was alright with it, because life was not the parade people made it out to be. Not when there was love to worry about. Not when there was love, heartbreak, betrayal, despair, loneliness, alienation, the emotions that rested on the far side of the heart.

"You've got some balls, kid. You really do." Stoplight. The car came to a brief rest before picking up again. "I'm impressed you actually made it this far with Derek; given all the lies, most kids would have cut off and ran. But you're dumb and you're in love, aren't you?"

"I'm not really a kid anymore, and I doubt Derek's a pedophile." Stiles said. He had no defense. He did what he could: he made one up.

"Funny. I can see why Derek would have liked you." Stiles heard would have explicitly. "I can see why Derek would have liked you in a lot of ways. You're cute. You're funny. You're adorable, really; and fucked up, mostly fucked up. Dad's the Sheriff of a little town called Beacon Hills, adorable town. Mom was the dedicated housewife and loving mother taking care of the hyperactive child. Was, because she is dead. Cancer, I believe? Slow death, the last parts were spent in a coma, a speechless coma. That's what the records say. I wonder if she said any words to you while she died. Maybe you fantasized that she did. Something like I love you, Stiles just as she expired, oh, how beautifully romantic, because the truth is: she died without having said those words to you one last time, right?"

"Stop." Stiles said. He felt his chest collapse. "Stop..."

"You don't like it when I talk about your dead mother?" Kate said. "You fucked my husband. Call us even. Equivalent exchange. An eye for an eye. That's how my family does things. We're just like the Hales, old, merciless. We're not as feral, as selfish, or as ambitious; but we play just as hard. Hales and Argents make terrific pairs."

"I'm sorry." Stiles managed to drag the words out.

"You don't mean that." Kate said. She chuckled, softly. Then she laughed. "How can you mean that? You want him to leave me to be with you. I know these things Stiles. I know that he's been talking to divorce attorneys, reviewing our prenuptials, our assets, our accounts. I know everything, and I know you are not sorry. Do not apologize. Do not ever fucking apologize for destroying my marriage, stealing my husband, and uprooting my life."

He looked at her. Stiles looked at her, and he wondered if the words she had just said rang the same in her ears as they did in his. Abruptly, the car turned into a supermarket parking lot. Kate found a small space, and parked. She gathered herself, took a deep breath, and turned to Stiles, beautiful face full of beautiful fury.

"You win, you little twink. You win. You get Derek. I don't want him anymore. He sure as hell doesn't want me. And he, well, wants you so much that he's willing to lose everything for you. He loves you. He loves you more than he ever loved me, and he loved me a whole damned lot. Congratulations. You get Derek. You get the fortune. You get the love, the loyalty, all the perks to being loved by Derek Hale, but let me tell you that I used to be loved by him too. Let me tell you what forced him out of love with me. You might have already realized, but Derek, inside, Derek is a coward, a loser, an utter fucking loser."

She closed her eyes again. Opened them.

"Let me tell you about her."

And Kate told Stiles about their daughter.

—

Kate was older than Derek. Four years older than Derek, and he knew her around the country club. He was sixteen when they met. They were not in love at first, but she was persistent. She saw the way his eyes would dart around, at boys, at girls, at anything in particular really, but she wanted him because he wanted no one and everyone wanted him. Kate was a hunter. Derek Hale was a prize that could be won only once in a lifetime, so she thought. His father was notoriously monogamous. He was the talk of their social circle. He never saw his marriage as a burden, or as a societal constraint. He loved his wife fully. He loved his wife, and she loved him enough to stay faithful up until the day he died.

They would talk about the usual things: Derek's college choices, his family, his family's business, his athletics. Kate began their first conversation, but after, Derek was all courage: he took the initiative, calling Kate, asking her out on dates, talking to her. It was all very scandalous for awhile, but eventually, he was eighteen and she was twenty-two, they were able to settle into a steady relationship. He went to college nearby the Hale estate, and she lived close, keeping an eye on him, fucking him, molding him into the man he would become. He loved her quickly, and she grew to love him in time. They were married a year after he graduated from college. He was twenty-two. Kate was twenty-six.

At twenty-three, they began trying. Kate thought it was a tad early, but Derek wanted a big family. He loved her. He swore to love her all their years together. She believed him then. She believed him as he kissed her. She believed him as he entered her. She believed him as he promised again and again that this would last forever. How could Kate know it was all lies in the end, but it was a blissful time. The happiest of her life, if she had to choose. Kate was pregnant in a matter of weeks. They were so happy. They called the relatives. They bought baby name books, and read through at least three in one surreal night. The next morning Derek's mother threw them all away, and swore that the child would have a traditional Hale name. Kate was angry, but she was happy. Derek was happy. They all were happy.

She had a wonderful pregnancy. There were times that were hard: when the morning sickness was so bad she felt like she had spent the entire day at the toilet vomiting, or when her feet were so swollen she could barely walk. Derek spent those toilet days with her, holding her hair back, rubbing her shoulders, asking her if she needed anything. Derek carried her when her feet were swollen, and when she needed to go places, to work or to the store, he bought her a wheelchair. He pushed her, and he saw no shame in taking care of his pregnant wife. Then, some nights, when they were in bed, she would whisper in his ear and ask him to fuck her, and Derek would say no. He was afraid he would hurt the baby. It was nonsense, but he slid between her thighs, eager to satisfy her anyway.

Kate was sitting in the living room reading Time magazine when her water broke. It was fifteen past eleven in the morning. Derek was at work. She called him, and he answered: she's coming? Kate's father drove her to the hospital, and Derek met them there with a handful of balloons and flowers. They were both elated, excited, and everything in between. Kate's eyes started to water. She wondered if this was real, if all this, the family coming together, this man who loved her so much, this baby that would change their lives all for the better, all of it, if all of it was just some sort of dream she was bound to wake up from. Derek kissed her cheek. He wiped the water from her eyes. He assured her everything was real. That this was their reality.

Kate had been dreaming. When the baby was delivered, she woke up.

The doctors said hers was a stillbirth, and in many cases, the cause was unknown; and in her case, the cause was, again, unknown. There was silence. Derek's stunned face turned to hers, and her stunned face turned to Derek's. They were still dreaming. This was a nightmare. This had to be. That little girl who had brought them so much joy, who had brought so much love in their lives, was gone, in an instant; she had not even lived. Derek told the doctors that there had to have been a mistake. There was yelling. Kate, well, Kate had always been a woman with a cold iron heart. Maybe it was the hormones galvanizing her system, but she lay there in the hospital bed and cried.

When they left the hospital, Kate held onto Derek's arm for support, for comfort, for some reassurance that they could keep going on. Derek shrugged her off, and walked ahead of her, not even bothering to cross her eyeline.

Derek never touched Kate again. He spoke to her. Called her his wife, but he refused to sleep in the same bed, refused to share anything with her, refused to even brush the slightest inch of skin with her. He refused to talk about the death of their daughter. He slid it under the rug. He went to work. He went to parties. He drank, heavily. He never cheated, as far as Kate knew, and she kept tabs on him, accurate tabs. This went on for years and years until one night, Derek came home late. Kate was in the living room, reading a magazine. He greeted her, and kissed her on the cheek.

It was the first night he had met Stiles.

—

Stiles had been soaking his tears in his sweater vest. Kate pulled up to his apartment, and unlocked the doors.

"After all those years, one night with you, and he suddenly...he suddenly started getting better. That's...I knew about you for months, but I didn't say anything, because, I was hoping that you would somehow lead him back to me. But it doesn't work that way, and he wants you." Kate bit the inside of her lower lip. "I really hate losing. Derek's a son-of-a-bitch, but he needs you. You don't need him. Think about that, twink, before you call him again."

Stiles stepped out onto the curb, and the moment he shut the door behind him, Kate drove off. He was feeling heavy. It had been a heavy day. He walked up the stairs to his apartment to see the familiar sight of Isaac and Jackson, making out on their couch. He wondered if Jackson was ever going to tell Isaac about Matt? Isaac probably already knew, but he was too blinded by his love for Jackson to give a shit. Love was blinding. How blind was Stiles, then, to all of Derek's faults? He should count them all one by one, and then make a list. Burn the list. Derek needed him. Derek Hale needed him. He was unsure if Kate was telling the truth, but Stiles wanted to believe her.

He stepped into his room. It was dark. He could hear Scott's breathing, the low rustle, the silent gurgle of his chronic asthma. He was listening to music, facedown into his pillow, his classic sadness pose. Stiles had gone through hell that day, but if Scott needed him, he would be there. He would be there, and he would pull him out of whatever shithole he was in, no matter how deep. Figuratively. Literal poop holes were a situation Scott and Stiles had discussed at full length the other year.

"Scott?" Stiles said. He flipped open the lights. Scott did not move. He shook Scott to get his attention. Scott looked up. For a moment, Stiles was worried. Did he ever have to be worried about Scott doing that though?

"Hey man..." Scott said. He pulled off his ear buds. "How're you? How was your big date? I expected you not to come home until tomorrow morning."

"Good." Stiles said. "Nothing much happened. It was good. What's up with you? I can't help but notice you're in your I'm in a funk pose."

"Just..." Scott sat up. "I might as well go ahead and say it because well it's all I'm going to talk about...oh wow. You know, I never thought I'd ever say this about her. I always, always thought I had found the one girl who would never do this to anyone, but I think Allison might be cheating on me."

Stiles sat next to Scott, and patted him on the shoulder.

"Are you sure? I mean. You could just be, paranoid. She doesn't seem like the type."

"Right." Scott said. "But I saw these text messages on her phone from this guy, about, moving in together and going public about us. I just...I mean I was playing around with her phone because she got the new Angry Birds."

"Cause Allison's crazy good at Angry Birds." Stiles nodded.

"Right. I just...how do I not read into that?"

"Just, talk to her? About it. Maybe. I don't know." Stiles said. "You trust her right?"

"With my life." Stiles forgot that Scott was more in love with Allison than anyone could ever be in love with anyone else in the world ever. He should not have questioned him on his trust, though seeing his face light up at with my life reminded Stiles that, in this world, there were people who were genuinely kind-hearted. After today, after all of Derek's business, a dose of Scott was completely necessary. Scott was all Stiles needed. This was his best-friend. His counterweight.

"Then ask her if she's seeing anyone else. Ask her to answer you honestly." Stiles said. Allison seemed like the type who would answer honestly. "Bring up the texts, and say you saw them by accident, because you did."

"Okay." Scott said.

"I'm sure by the end the conversation, it'll have been a misunderstanding, and you two will still be soul mates, destined to be together till death do you part, right?" Stiles patted him on the back one more time before getting up. "Excuse me, I have to..." There was someone at the door. Stiles had a good feeling who it was. He would probably be panting, or crying, or something emotional.

"That's Derek. So.."

"Go." Scott said. "Go, be swept off your feet."

Stiles jogged to the front door, and opened it. There he was, just as he had left him at the San Francisco Zoo, Derek Hale, the guy he would trade his entire life for two times over if he could. He took a moment to look at Derek, to size him up, to breathe him in, to hear the wave of his being, all that philosophical nonsense, because this was the moment, this was the moment that their whole relationship was leading up to, the moment Stiles knew fate had set up for them all along.

"Stiles..." Derek said. He was panting.

"I talked to your wife." Stiles said. He walked out into the hallway, and shut the door behind him. "She explained everything."

"She did."

"About you and her. About your daughter." Stiles said. "I cried a couple times. You were a good husband."

"Thanks..."

"Then you were a shitty one."

"Stiles."

"When, when is that going to happen to me Derek? When are things going to get hard for us, and when are you going to give up on me?"

"Stiles."

"Kate doesn't want you." Stiles shook his head. "I want you, but I can't want you. You're bad news. You let me out in the open earlier today...I just, I can't trust you at all, and I don't think I ever will."

He grabbed Derek's hand. He squeezed it.

"So, Derek."

"Don't. Stiles. Don't."

"It's over." He let go. Stiles opened the door, and then shut it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Your Heart For My White Fences [8/10]**

Derek asked himself: what was a zombie? A still-living mass of moving flesh held together by bone and sinew, walking around the streets with clothes, or clothes off depending on the director's interpretation, hungering for brains more likely than not: he asked himself this because zombies, like most characters on the screen and stage, deserved motivations, even if the actor had to bullshit those motivations. Stiles Stilinski, like some kind of hyperactive worm, had burrowed into the deep crevices of Derek's mind, and laid his little eggs which would hatch from time to time as these random bursts of unrestrained knowledge and creative thought: unforgivable in polite society and utterly useless in commercial affairs. Zombie. Why did he think zombie in the first place? Why did he think so often?

Stiles had told him: when he thought of something random but seemingly brilliant, he always tried to trace it back a few steps in the mental chain just to see where the idea might have originated. He was always doing these strange things with his brain, always acting strange, always challenging Derek to be different and to try things and to approach life with renewed vigor. Stiles would try to wake him up in the morning with a kiss when they were together, or a text when they were apart, but Stiles knew Derek wanted to start the day with Stiles on his mind, because to Derek, Stiles was hope in its purest, the first step forward he had taken in a very long time. What became of a man when he lost someone like that, someone so vital to him and to his recovery, did he give up and crawl back into his shell?

A week had passed since Stiles left him on the other side of the apartment door. Derek had tried, tried, tried to contact him, but there was no answer. Only silence. Only silence and regret, coming over him, consuming everything, in their wake a trail of gray scale, void of color, happiness, and life. He had only felt like this once, and he was barely sure he could make it through that time. Now, Derek was dogged down by the weight of his memory, his own sins, his own stupidity, his own immorality, and he lived seemingly without direction, perhaps, with a direction he had to invent himself just to justify his existence: he wanted to live to see Stiles again, prove himself again, and win him back. He was a zombie. He was a zombie with a single craving. He was a zombie, a member of the living dead, an existence that only came and went to pester the living live. Nothing. He was nothing but a zombie.

Derek opened the door to his office after greeting his secretary. He stashed his briefcase underneath his desk before looking to check his messages, and noticed the bright yellow envelope sitting by his picture of Stiles, the picture he had put up the day Peter and Laura scheduled the zoo trip. Curious, he opened it.

Divorce filings from Kate Argent Hale.

—

Peter was quick to visit after hearing about the divorce, quick to make his way down the hallway, quick to open the door and to offer his most solemn condolences. He had, obviously, read the filings before Derek had arrived. He was, nonetheless, interested in Derek's reaction to the news; he had been acting strangely the entire week, though righteously aloof as he had promised when he told Peter and Laura that he was "done with this family" during the zoo incident. Peter wanted to explain the circumstances, but Derek was too worried about Stiles, the boy toy who might become an in-law, if Derek was so inclined.

"She dropped them off first thing." Peter said.

"Fuck off." Derek said. He refused to even look at Peter.

"Derek, you can't..."

Derek threw an antique desk clock at Peter.

"Alright, I deserved that one, Derek, but you have to understand the position Kate put us in. She...threatened to leak information about the family, about our dealings, the...not so good information."

Derek looked up.

"She knows that's breaking the rules."

"Yes."

"She knows that's...she won't get anything from this divorce. She broke the honor code between the old families. She gets nothing."

"I thought you wanted to know."

"Then...why did you force Stiles to watch the slaughter?"

"It was one of her conditions, Derek. Don't ask me. Why don't you talk to your goddamned wife before she walks out on you." Peter said. He started to walk out of the room, rubbing the part of his arm that Derek had hit with the clock. He passed the antique clock, shattered in places, but severely broken in the one place that counted most: the face, the clock face, the arms were broken, the numbers were skewed and scattered along the floor.

"Wait, uncle Peter." Derek called out to him.

"Yes?"

"Please, hold down the fort for me today. I'll be back tomorrow." Derek said. He picked up his briefcase and began to head for the door. Peter was a little stunned, and before he knew it, Derek was out the door telling his secretary to call up the custodial staff to clean the mess in his office. Peter stood alone in the office, staring at the antique clock, looking at Derek's figure disappearing down the hallway, wondering what had just happened and if his nephew had forgiven him. He actually cared what Derek thought of him, interesting; Peter usually showed absolutely no remorse for his actions, but with his nephew, he was different. It was an interesting moment for him, to say the least. But he was Peter Hale in the end, and he was tired of helping people. He was even more tired of thinking about Derek, so he approached the cute secretary sitting outside Derek's office, gave her his famous smile and a fresh good morning, and wondered how long it would take him to get her to try anal. He would bet till the end of the day; Derek had a tendency to hire sluts.

—

Derek raced home, to his own house, not Stiles's apartment or the condo he bought to share with Stiles, but the house he lived in with his wife, his actual street address. He felt strange. It had been years since he had looked forward to coming home, to this home at least. Those years after their daughter had died made the house feel emptying. Every minute he spent in it, he felt more drained, as if there were cuts forming on the viscera of his soul. In all those years, he had thought: how will I get through this? How will I survive? How would that little girl feel? Why her? Why her? Why did this happen to us? What did we do to bring this upon ourselves? He had spent so long staring inward, screaming at the empty spaces, trying to ask questions in the dark dancehalls of his heart, begging the cold rocks in his mind to solve his problems.

There was Kate, waiting in the wings, suffering just as much as he did, watching him, caring for him; she had her faults. She had her graces. Did she deserve what he had done? No, he had not. Did he deserve her? No he did not. He wondered why she stayed; she had other lovers. He had always assumed she did. He pulled his car into the garage. He walked into the kitchen. There was Kate, sipping wine in a short dress, her stolid eyes on him.

"Kate." Derek said.

She took a sip. It was a long sip. She finished the glass.

"You haven't looked at me like that for a long time. Like you wanted to peer into my soul. I always thought it was your sexiest look, Derek." She said. "Now, tell me what you want from me, you god forsaken bastard."

He poured her another glass of wine.

"I want to know why you did it. I want to know why you arranged the entire ordeal for Stiles. Why you broke the code of silence. I had my lawyers look over this...if you had as much evidence on Stiles and I as you did you would had a case against me. Alimony. Half of everything."

She smiled. She took the glass, and sipped. This time only a bit.

"I did it because I wanted to. I did it because I don't need any of you. Not even half. If I did want you, it would be the whole or nothing at all. I don't want to be your wife and watch you love someone else. I want to be your wife and I want you to love me and only me, but that's a fucking pipedream. I know it." She said. "I didn't even want to have a kid, Derek! I didn't want that life, but I wanted to make you happy and instead I made you hate me." She broke a little, and she looked as if she were about to cry, but Kate regained herself. "Now look at me. I'm getting divorced. I'm moving back in with my parents. Planning my niece's wedding for rent. You ruined me Derek."

"I...what can I do?" Derek said. "I want to make this better."

"What can you do? What can you fucking do?"

She laughed. She threw the wine glass on the floor.

"Go get your twink. Move on with your goddamned life, Derek. Make him happy. Make yourself happy. I know he probably broke up with you. You've been sulking all week. I love you But..."

He reached out, held her arms with both hands, then brought her into his embrace. It was as if a long winter had just ended, and the warmth had just returned. Kate felt Derek's skin on her skin. Suddenly, the memories of their life together flooded in. Nights, days, months, years, minutes, seconds, everything she had tried to throw away brought itself to the surface of her mind. She felt herself leaning on him, losing herself in his strength, just letting herself fade into the comfort of his body and his warmth. They stayed like this for a long while, enjoying each other, remembering the way the other felt, until they were both satisfied.

"Kate, I loved you. I love you."

"Spend the rest of your fucking life making these last couple years up to me, Derek Hale. Live your life and let me live mine." He kissed her. It was brief, on the lips, no tongue; there were only feelings of goodbye and resignation. Kate pulled away. She knew he did not love her like she wanted him to love her, and she would not settle for pity or for a fleeting moment. She looked at the man she was about to leave, the man she had given her earliest years for, and she wondered one thing, one last thing.

"Tell me, Derek." She said. "I deconstructed most of the affair, except one thing: how did you and Stiles meet?"

Derek grinned. He put a hand on the kitchen counter to balance himself as he closed his eyes to recollect the memory.

"I...saw him walking on the street. I followed him. I followed him around some days when I could find him and I had the time. This was...maybe the year before we actually first spoke to each other."

"Christ Almighty." Kate joined him at the counter. "You are diabolical."

"With you, it was the same, so I knew he was special. I looked at him, and I knew. I knew I wanted him. I just waited. I waited for him to notice me. Then, he did. Eventually, we struck up our deal and we started our relationship." Derek was filled with a sunny nostalgia. "You always thought you were the one who made the first move, but, I had been waiting for you. I went to the country club everyday to catch your attention. I didn't think I could, but I did."

"You sick bastard. Why did you never tell me this?"

"I suppose it's for the same reason we're getting divorced. I didn't have the courage to trust you." Derek said. There was a silence, but it was a good silence, a hopeful silence, a silence that was shared between two people finally building a bridge to each other's hearts. Derek looked at his wife. She looked at him. A spark crossed.

"Kate, there's one thing we still need to do together."

"It's about time, isn't it?"

—

They had only been there once together, and back then, they were at least ten feet apart during the entire ceremony. The second time, they came hand in hand, not as husband and wife, but as father and mother, intent on naming a daughter who deserved to be named. It was not a warm afternoon, and it was not a chilly one. There were clouds, and there was sunshine. They had walked these same steps, the steps up to the children's cemetery, alone for years, to pay their respects to their daughter, but they had never gone together. The path was real. They knew the grass to be real, the gravestones, and the small trees that had been planted every few feet, but the present, the flow of events as it occurred right then, was surreal.

Doubtless, they were tearing up. From the moment they stepped out of their car and the soles of their shoes hit the pavement, the tears were heavy in their eyes. Step by step met tear by tear falling onto the sullen grass. Derek was not a man to cry, and Kate was not a woman to cry; but together they were parents about to name their dead child. Tears were given to them, because tears, like so many aspects of human nature, are meant to be shared. They had to cry together, because for all their strength, the one thing they were unable to do alone was show weakness. The walk was slow. The tears were slow, and they did not seem to dry. They could bear them though.

They stood before the small grave marked Here Lies the Daughter of Derek and Kate Hale. They held hands. They waited for the exact moment to come.

"I," Derek spoke first, "really wanted to be your daddy. I really wanted to be your daddy, and when I couldn't be, I became a terrible husband to your mommy. I'm sorry for that, mommy."

He turned at Kate.

"And I forgive you, daddy. At least, I plan to. Give it some time. I carried you for nine months, baby girl. It was the best time of my life. This guy never got to be with you, but I did, so...maybe that's my consolation prize."

"You are so mean, Kate." Derek said with a smile.

"You just got to take it now buddy."

"Now, we're sorry we were stupid enough to let you go on all this time without a name." Derek said.

"Daddy was mostly stupid." Kate added. "No, don't blame daddy. Don't...he loves you, okay? So, Candace, Caddy, I really, really can't wait to see you, but it won't be for a long time."

"We'll visit you a lot so you won't get lonely. This time, together." Derek said. He gripped Kate's hand. They stood silent as they thought of Caddy, what she would have looked like, what she would have liked, if she would be moody like her father or headstrong like her mother. They thought for awhile, and they said goodbye. They walked to their car. They were no longer crying.

—

He dropped Kate off at the house, and told her his attorney would send the divorce papers to hers over the weekend. She nodded, and disappeared. Derek got out of his car, and took a deep breath, deep enough to push sharp air against his lungs. He leaned against his car, and made himself comfortable. He wondered what he was now. What would Stiles think of him now. Stiles was somewhere, probably out with his friends, his silly grin on, being happy, and a part of Derek was glad. A part of Derek could not stand the thought of Stiles being happy without him. What was he? He had just gone to his daughter's grave to try and reconcile his sins, and he was already proving himself to be the worthless bastard he always was.

He slipped down to the ground. He was never going to be anyone but Derek Hale. There was no point in trying to change, in trying to become someone he was not. He was going to be selfish. He was going to be petty. He was going to be jealous. He was going to be loving. He was going to be moody. He was going to be possessive. He was going to be all the things he was. It was hard to excise the essential pieces of a person's character. It was damn near impossible. Derek, alone and miserable, found himself on the losing side of a lifelong game of Identity; he had been playing against the world. The world always won.

He gave up. It was his answer.

The world was not conscious, but he was. He could retire. The world could not. You see, the world had to keep playing. He could leave the game, and do whatever he wanted. The world was damned to the game, and Derek was damned to his freedom; so what if freedom was a kind of failure. He pulled out his cellphone, and decided to try Stiles one more time. He could be Derek Hale, and Derek Hale could be many things more than himself.

Fate or coincidence, Stiles called him first.

"Derek." He said. "Derek. You...I...told him...to talk to her...about...the messages...just..."

"Stiles, what?"

"I need...you...come...he's in the hospital...Derek, please."

"Stiles, relax. Stiles."

"Derek, I can't...if he dies, I won't know what to do. I won't know what to do and I won't know what to think and I won't...I won't won't won't."

"If who dies? Who's in the hospital?"

"Scott." Stiles said. Life opened a door. She asked Derek to step through, and she asked Derek if he was ready or not. Live, or live not. Move, or move not. Derek chose to move. Derek chose Stiles on first instinct, on first notice, without even thinking, as if the culmination of his life's choices, his experiences, his mistakes, his failures, and his misgivings reared him for this moment. He started the car. One last look at the house, at the home he once shared with Kate, at the future he imagined for Caddy, and he left without looking, his heart resolved to paint over the white of his fences: no, his heart resolved to topple the blockade all together.


	9. Chapter 9

"Shot? so quick, so clean an ending?  
Oh that was right, lad, that was brave:  
Yours was not an ill for mending,  
'Twas best to take it to the grave.

Oh you had forethought, you could reason,  
And saw your road and where it led,  
And early wise and brave in season  
Put the pistol to your head.

Oh soon, and better so than later  
After long disgrace and scorn,  
You shot dead the household traitor,  
The soul that should not have been born.

Right you guessed the rising morrow  
And scorned to tread the mire you must:  
Dust's your wages, son of sorrow,  
But men may come to worse than dust.

Souls undone, undoing others, —  
Long time since the tale began.  
You would not live to wrong your brothers:  
Oh lad, you died as fits a man.

Now to your grave shall friend and stranger  
With ruth and some with envy come:  
Undishonoured, clear of danger,  
Clean of guilt, pass hence and home.

Turn safe to rest, no dreams, no waking;  
And here, man, here's the wreath I've made:  
'Tis not a gift that's worth the taking,  
But wear it and it will not fade."

**Your Heart For My White Fences [9/10]**

The room was full of people.

Stiles knew exactly where he was, and maybe knowing where he was forced him to acknowledge things as limited and fixed. He had gone on thinking that there ways of living, ways of moving around life, thinking outside the box, hoping and praying, that made the world fluid and malleable, but knowing where he was at that moment, sitting in the emergency room waiting for a sliver of information on Scott, informed him of the very opposite. He sat in one of eight chairs arranged in a rectangle, one of three rectangles, in the hospital emergency room; those tables were not going to change, and even if he moved them, someone—someone he did not even know and someone he could not put a face to—would return them as they were before Stiles left his mark.

There were nurses, doctors, people passing Jackson, Lydia, and Stiles by. They all wanted the next person to be the messenger with an answer, the doctor who would come out, break the news, tell them what had happened to their best friend, the friend they had found barely breathing in the bathtub early that morning. Scott was always the one who did good. Scott was always the one _doing _good. Jackson was the hopeless slut. Stiles was the good guy dating a married man. Lydia was the perfectionist without a nice bone in her body. Scott was _good_, and maybe that was why Allison kept him for so long.

Kept him was a good way to describe what she did.

She was engaged. Who would have thought? Stiles did not know. Of all people, Stiles should have known, given all his experience with marriage and home-wrecking. Scott had come home two days ago, after having left to talk with Allison, and he just collapsed on the couch, unable to speak, arms limp and eyes wide. It took three long hours for Stiles to get the words out of him: _she's engaged. _Allison, engaged, to anyone other than Scott McCall: the idea boggled the mind. Scott in this state, not moving, barely breathing, boggled the mind even more. Stiles needed to get a grip. He wanted to call Derek. He could not, because Derek relying on Derek would screw him over in the end. He wanted to focus on Scott. He wanted to call Derek. He wanted Derek to stop mattering to him. Laughable. Derek would always matter.

Maybe if he had called Derek, he would have had a better grip on the situation. He would have been able to help Scott, stop him, prevent _this_ from happening. He had been so fucking helpless, again; this time, he wasn't the one suffering, Scott was. Stiles looked at Lydia, looked at Jackson, and looked at his own hands. He wondered if they were all feeling the same dread, the same nagging feeling in their chests should the worst come to pass, and the doctor come through the door with _that _look on his face, their collective worlds would shatter all at once. A look that wasn't sorry, that wasn't smug, that wasn't anything but indistinct. A look just like that one on the doctor coming through the door. Stiles bit his lower lip, squeezed his fingers deep into his palms, to try to feel something more painful than the fear creeping over him.

"Are you the folks who brought Scott McCall in?"

Jackson gulped. "Yeah. We are."

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid he didn't make it. He lost too much blood. We tried everything we could."

She was crying. He was angry.

"Why? Why are you talking to him?"

"Scott, don't..."

"Matt Daehler? The Camera Creeper from high school? Why is he...why do you have another phone _filled _with messages from him? Are you cheating on me? Just tell me. Just tell me, Allison. I swear. I swear we can get through this. "

"No."

"Then what the hell..."

"We're engaged. We've been engaged for four years."

She said. He stopped screaming. He almost stopped breathing. Black, black darkness.

She begged him not to leave.

"I can't, Allison."

"Scott. I love you."

"You made me into a fucking monster. Just like _him_."

The pain got to her. He saw so and winced.

"I just have to...get some ice..." She said.

He ran. She was alone, bruised and alone.

He cut once. More of a carve. Twice. Three times. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Sev

Interesting thing, death. The way it consumed the living.

Fuck. He wanted to think. He wanted desperately to think and to stop feeling, but there was no end to the feeling, no end to the reality of what lay before them, to the hospital walls, to the chairs, to the endless stream of people watching them, waiting for them to cry, trying to extract their grief. Stiles dug his face into his palms._ So long as he had Scott he would be okay. _Pressure on his teeth. He tried to break his own jaw with the force his bite; he wanted so bad to escape the cascade of memories, of thoughts, of broken plans, of expectations. _So long as he had Scott he would be okay_. The world revolving around him wanted to shove the irony down his throat and rip it straight through his heart.

Derek was an escape. Derek was his escape. Could be. He could ask Derek to take him away to Jamaica, and Derek would say yes because Derek _needed _him. It was all such a perfect fucking plan, and they could smoke all the pot they wanted, forget about the funeral, about the eulogy, about the will, about the suicide notes, about the everything and the nothing. Stiles wanted to forget about the nothing most of all. When someone died, you lost them; your plans with them, your future, those expectations, the road trips, the children you would raise to play lacrosse and baseball and _Mass Effect_, they became empty. They equaled nothing, because that person was no longer there.

The loss of his mother had been a similar experience. He was younger, so he felt less. He cried a lot more. He gave them what they wanted. Today he did not cry at all. As he was now, Stiles had a little more knowledge under his belt, a smidge more wisdom, he knew what the feelings inside him were, their nuances and their personalities, the way they liked to bubble onto the surface. He knew how to describe the hurt. He should have been crying his body dry and dusty, but Stiles let himself go. He let himself fade out into the feelings. Let his limbs go numb as the people around them went about their day.

She came. Allison Argent, the girl at the center of the disaster, followed by her father and mother. She barely looked like herself: sweatpants, hair undone underneath a thick baseball cap, loose collegiate sweatshirt messily pulled over herself, and a large pair of sunglasses to cover her normally porcelain face. Allison Argent had been confined to her parent's house for days. Stiles could barely notice it under the concealer, but a bruise, a large square of a bruise, on her right cheek. Another, maybe four. Stiles connected the dots, the miserable dots, who had all aligned against him. All aligned against everyone. The stars were sadistic sons of bitches.

She stood, hurt by her shame, before asking: "Is he?"

Lydia hugged her, rubbed her back, and whispered: "I'm sorry."

"No. No. No." Allison said.

Stiles watched Allison drop to the floor as she sobbed. _No. No. No. _She said, again and again. _I didn't. I didn't want this. It was my fault he hit me because I didn't tell him, and I didn't. I couldn't. _There was so much wrong with her words, but the reality was in the tears falling from her eyes. _I don't love Matt at all. I don't, I don't, but...there's so much on the line with the family and I can't, I can't..._ Eventually, Lydia and her parents took Allison outside. She needed to cry. She needed to let her feelings out, and she needed to wail. She needed to feel the guilt. _Scott, I'm so sorry. Scott, I'm so sorry. _She said. Stiles could hear her until the doors closed behind her.

Jackson asked him a question: "You aren't crying."

"I can't. I don't know why."

"That's a problem. You cry more than anyone else, Stiles."

"She was engaged to Matt. Your Matt. Matt Daehler."

Jackson looked at the ground.

"I knew. Since we broke up back then, I knew. He told me."

Stiles wanted to beat the pretty out of Jackson.

"You didn't tell us?" Stiles said. "You...knew all this time?"

"It was her secret. It was Matt's secret. Just like Derek was your secret. People have to have their secrets, Stiles. The truth is..." Jackson found it difficult to continue speaking. He clasped his hands together, and started up again. "Damning. That's why we prefer fiction. That's why we live out fantasies."

"Jackson..."

"I might have just let one of my best-friends kill himself, Stiles. I know that, but if my fucked-up heart knows anything, it's how to pick itself up." Jackson looked up to meet Isaac's gaze coming into view. "You called Derek, right? You and him can talk to Mrs. McCall. Isaac's here, well, I'm no good at this sort of stuff. Comforting people. I suggest you give yourself a good cry first, because...fuck, what am I saying? I don't want to be here because I feel guilty as shit. I feel guilty as shit, and I want Isaac to make me feel better."

Stiles watched Jackson go. He had done a lot of watching. He began to wonder if that was all he could do: watch and let the world overtake him. What Scott did. He understood the basis. Being so angry that he lashed out at Allison, realizing what he did, and realizing what he had become. The person Scott had become, that person was the one person Scott had hated his whole life. He decided to withdraw rather than play. Jackson, Matt, Allison, Stiles, Derek, Lydia, Kate, Laura, Peter, everyone in the whole fucking world stood by while Scott suffered. They all took a piece of him. Left him bloody on the floor, but the problem with the dead was that their memory haunted the living. Kept them awake at night. Kept them from moving on.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. A hand that pulled him straight out of perdition, it felt like.

"Stiles."

"Derek."

Derek sat next to him. Held his hand, tight, just as he needed. Stiles hated and loved Derek for this, the intuition.

"You're not crying. Is he okay?"

"No, he's dead."

Derek gripped harder. There was only concern on his face. Stiles likened it to pity. He had to interpret everything Derek did as something else; it was the only way to get at the truth.

"Stiles, I'm so sorry."

"This whole fucking time...people having been lying and people have been cheating and people have been playing games. Scott wasn't playing games, and...he was the one that was screwed over. He was the one that lost." Stiles said. "Tell me how that's fair, Derek."

"It's not." Derek said.

"Well, fuck the world."

"Fuck it."

Stiles relaxed.

"I don't get you." He told Derek.

"I know. I want you to. I desperately want you to."

Derek looked like he was about to tell Stiles something bad. He had that look on his face, the quiver in his lip, the furrow in his brow.

"Allison is my niece. She won't be after the divorce, though. I knew the engagement entire time. I just..." Derek said.

"People's secrets are their secrets."

"Yes."

"If we do this. If we do _us_, again_. _Your secrets are my secrets. My secrets are your secrets. Our secrets are our secrets."

"That's...how it will be."

"And."

"Okay. More demands."

"I top once in awhile."

"No deal."

"Oh, I don't think you're in a position to negotiate here."

"Birthdays. Milestones. That's it."

"Alright. That's better than last time's 'bottom-only' situation."

Derek kissed the top of Stiles's knuckles. Derek had made mistakes. Derek had hurt people, and Derek had issued his fair share of scars. Stiles burrowed into Derek's shoulder. He let himself rest.

"Stiles," Derek said. "Why aren't you crying."

"I don't want to."

"Crying isn't voluntary."

"It is for me."

"_Field of Dreams _begs to differ."

Stiles knew when he was beat.

"Crying is like admitting he's gone."

"I get that." Derek said.

"Yeah. I knew you would. That's why. That's why I said it."

"When your mom went, when did you cry?"

"I always cried. Everyday I cried. Everytime she hurt, I cried, because I was always anticipating her being gone. Her disappearing. I had...given up so early on. That's what the tears were for. Tears were me telling the world I gave up."

"You don't have to cry now. You can tell the world fuck you, I'll keep going."

"But he's dead. There's nothing worth going on for."

"Okay. There's nothing worth going on for."

Stiles let out a breath. Somehow, in the midst of all that he was feeling, he fell asleep. Just the notion of Derek being there, being himself, them being themselves, that was comfort enough. In the brief window between sleep and the waking world, he wondered if Derek was going to be there when he woke up.

Stiles woke up. His head lay on the armrest of one of the emergency room seats, cushioned by Derek's coat. He opened his eyes and scanned the area for Derek. He never once thought he had left. There he was holding Mrs. McCall in his arms, cradling her as she cried. Derek did not have the experience of raising a child, but he could empathize with her to some degree, Stiles guessed. He could understand the way she screamed at the doctors, the way she wailed, the way she begged for this all to be a mistake, and he understood this a little better than most people.

"That's a good guy, there, Stiles. The minute he saw Mrs. McCall, he rushed up to tell her the news for you." A familiar voice gave Stiles the jitters. "How long have you two been going out?" His dad was sitting a few seats away from him. Stiles was surprised, a little nervous, and mostly scared.

"Oh my God, Dad. Eight months, or so."

"Melissa needed a ride. I gave her one. God. Scott? Of all the people." The Sheriff shook his head. "You never really know.

"I know Dad. Scott never did anything wrong. Scott...deserved to be happy."

"It's always the ones that don't deserve it. I've been in law enforcement long enough to know that." The Sheriff said. "How have you been, though, through all this? I came up too because I was worried."

"He was my best friend."

"That's true."

"I loved him."

"Yeah."

"We were going to take our kids to baseball games together. We were going to get drunk every Friday together. We were...going to do so many things, and I can't even cry for him, Dad."

The Sheriff boosted himself up off his chair, and sat next to his son, slinging one arm around Stiles's shoulder. "Grief's a shitty demon. You can't always shake him off the same way, by crying, by drinking, by beating something up. Sometimes it asks for something different. You don't always know what it's going to ask of you. You just got to pray you don't have be asked too much in one lifetime."

"When mom died, how'd you get over it?"

"It took a long time. I think. I had to meet Melissa. It asked me to...meet someone else. That's what it took. That's when I finally took off my wedding ring."

Stiles looked at Derek. In the whole room, he was aware of maybe four people: himself, Derek, his father, and Mrs. McCall. That day he swore he had aged two hundred years, maybe more, depending.

Derek walked Stiles out to his car. It was near seven in the evening.

"I offered your Father the condo. Do you...?"

"Stay with me. At the apartment."

"Yeah."

Derek drove. Stiles led him up the stairs, right to the front door, where he paused. He waited, unable to twist the key into its slot; he had something to say to Derek, but he was hesitant to say it.

"I'm going to let you in again."

"You don't have to."

"This." Stiles said. "I would be lying if I said 'the last time' because you probably get as many chances as you're willing to take."

"Stiles. Don't do that to yourself."

"I'm going to be a mess for awhile. Is that okay?"

"You can be as much as a mess as you want."

"Derek, you make me insane."

"Stiles, you make me crazy."

Stiles opened the door. He flicked open the lights. He remembered that the bathroom needed to be cleaned, and Derek, seeing the dark in his eyes, told him that he would do it. He asked Stiles to wait in the bedroom while he scrubbed. Just imagining the scene made Stiles's heart pang for Scott. Scott. _Why'd you leave me? Why'd you do that to yourself? I...you could have depended on me. After what you did, we could have...we could have talk about it..._ He was lost. He could reason with himself for hours on end, but there was nothing he could do. No conclusion. No resolution. Nothing. Just blind feeling and empty searching. In the lonely dark room he once shared with Scott, Stiles started to cry.


	10. Chapter 10

Thanks for sticking with this story, again. This final chapter is short. I don't have much else to say.

**Your Heart For My White Fences [10/10]**

Life fell into place again piece by piece after Scott McCall's death. One year, his friends found themselves out of college and onto better things, and the other, they were settling into fenced houses with yards and spouses. Living was a natural thing after a death. There was a hole in their hearts, but it filled. Maybe this was an easy ending, or maybe this was the most difficult ending amongst the many. Stiles did not want to play the fortune teller or the preacher. The games he played were simpler, but profound. He played peek-a-boo one year, then hide and seek the next, perhaps shoots and ladders next year, monopoly, then Scrabble tens of games down the road. Today he was at the park watching the swings go by, the children play, allowing the life around him to flow and resonate with the idle chatter of the parents and nannies around him.

"Your Scotty is so energetic! Where does he get it?" Stiles received the question from the mother in the Louis Vuitton get-up to his right. "Oh, I mean. I'm not asking _which _one of you was the donor, I just..."

"No, it's alright. We don't know, but from his eyes, I'm thinking it was Derek's portion which took. They're a little unique, his eyes, like marbles." Stiles said. He had gotten to used to the playground curiosities, but he never enjoyed the questions or the judgments behind them. They wanted to move into a safe neighborhood, and the neighbors, the intrigue, the stupidity they had to wade through at times, that was the tradeoff.

"Oh, how curious. I mean. How all this surrogacy business works with you and your husband. Not the fact that you have a husband, being a man and all. I was all for the bill even though my parents weren't. It was a big deal at the dinner table for a couple months and the tensions were so high..." Stiles agreed with her occassionally and added in when he felt like the conversation was dragging. He needed to play along with the neighbors, even though he never really felt in place here. No one did. Neighborhoods like this were full of sharks circling around each other, keeping each other on their toes, and that was part of their allure.

Scottie fell down. He was on the floor by the swings. Stiles thanked the woman, and rushed over to see if he was alright. The kid, a little teary-eyed, told his dad that he was fine and that he didn't need to be taken care of.

"Scottie, just...if you need anything, tell me, okay?"

"Daddy, I'm going to tell papa you're being clingey again and he's going to eat you when you're in bed and you're going to be so _sorry_."

"Your papa needs to not tell you those things. You're six. And six year olds can't tell their daddies they're going to be so _sorry_. Not even you."

"Almost seven and those kids over there asked me to play with them and I think they're eight. Eight year olds asked me to play with them, daddy. That's a-mazing I think, don't you think?"

"Woah, I wouldn't want to keep you from playing with eight year olds."

"Woah. Woah. Woah!" Scottie repeated as he ran off. Stiles watched him go. He watched him go, and he wanted to keep him there, with him. He wanted to keep him from the world for a little while, let him know what it was like to be protected, to be loved, to have solid ground under his feet. The swings swung past. There was idle chatter and the laughter of children. Stiles enjoyed the sound despite the monotony and the repetition. It was music that broke him off from the world and into his quietest space where he could be alone with his thoughts, his son, and his memories.

He walked home with Scottie, and entered the house. Derek was home.

"Ten years to the day." Stiles said to Derek. "Ten years."

"You stayed with me."

"That was luck on your part. I fell in love with you again."

They were in their bed talking to each other later that day. Scottie had been tucked in about an hour earlier. Usually, Stiles would have either jumped on Derek by now or they would have both fallen asleep, but there was dimness hanging over the night, a dark memory of a death they had been unable to forget.

"So many things rely on luck. But I'm glad to be lucky if it meant all this."

"Derek, I don't want Scottie to go through the things we did. I don't... he fell down today and I almost... I wanted to keep him from the world."

"Protect him from the world. That's what we're here for right now. We get to protect him, so enjoy it while it lasts. Eventually we can't protect him anymore despite how much we want to."

"God. That's what I'm afraid of. Why can't I be the calm, collected dad?" Stiles said. "I want to be the dad that just hangs back."

"You are who you are, and that's exactly what Scottie needs."

Stiles and Derek lay there awhile, enjoying each other's company before settling into a state close to sleep. Stiles felt compelled to say something before, though, and he opened his mouth. Derek managed to hang on to the waking world before drifting off.

"I would have come back to you. You know. Even if Scott hadn't have died. I've thought about it a lot, and even then, I think we were destined for this. You remember that Hamlet line you quoted me?"

"_There is special providence in the fall of a Sparrow_?"

"Yeah, that little gem of a speech. _If it be now, tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come_. It's inevitable between us, Derek. I think, so don't think you were lucky. That's... that's how it is."

"That's how... it is. Haha. I can't believe that."

The quiet came over them.

"Fuck." Stiles said. "I can't either."

Derek kissed his forehead.


End file.
